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American Church 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap._. T ...„ Copyright No. 

Shelf. .... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




Rev. G. JAMES JONES. 



American Church 



Sabbath Evening Addresses 



by 



G. JAMES JONES, M.A., Ph. D. 




£%^VV X 



KNOXVILLB 

BEAN, WARTERS & GAUT. 

1896. 



.34, 



Copyrighted 1896. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Some Criticisms n 

Origin, Purpose, Development 19 

Beginnings of Great Things 27 

The Kingdom 37 

Socialism 43 

New Developments Without 51 

Divisions Within 57 

The Form Without the Power 67 

Begging Existence 81 

Trifling Versus Winning 87 

The IyAw of Prosperity 99 

The Religion of Mathematics ........ 109 

The Mathematics of Religion 123 

Our Duty To-day 139 

Our Privilege To-morrow 148 



TO THE 

REV. J. E. RANKIN, D.D., LL.D, 

PRESIDENT OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

IN HAPPY REMEMBRANCE OF SOME YEARS 

OF ASSOCIATION WITH HIM IN CHURCH 

AND UNIVERSITY WORK, 

THIS UTTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This little book was not written to order. Nei- 
ther is it a development. It has simply been very 
hastily thrown together- The author, coming to 
his present charge in July last, and finding that his 
predecessor, Dr. John Francis Da vies, had done 
such splendid work in developing a very promis- 
ing field, and that an honest effort ought to be 
made to maintain the interest and to continue 
the development of the work, he began to deliver 
a special course of lectures on the Church of 
to-day and to-morrow. He was made glad by 
the hearty and enthusiastic reception given to 
them, and still more was he made to rejoice when 
the church and congregation with perfect una- 
nimit}^ voted to rebuild at once, providing essen- 
tial means for institutional work. It is expected 
that the new building will be ready before Christ- 
mas of this year. 

In preparing these lectures for the press, as 
little change as possible was made, so as to retain 
the directness appropriate to the platform. The 



Vlll. 

advance sheets bear evidence of haste in compo- 
sition, and that was truly the case. Some im- 
provements might be made by re-writing, but 
that is now impossible. The reader will also see 
that the author has made use of the thoughts of 
others, and credit is given. The weekly religious- 
journals seem to have said, from week to week 
during the summer, just the thing that was 
needed. The author wishes to express his 
thanks for the help received from the papers and 
the able books used. The little volume is pre- 
sented to the leniency of the reader, with the 
hope that it may help some at least to realize 
the opportunities and privileges of the age, and 
that the grandest, noblest, divinest thing possible 
to men in this life is the thorough and absolute 
sacrificing of all selfish interests to the glory of 
Christ. 

G. JAMES JOXES. 
Knoxville, Tenn., September 14, 1896. 



SOME CRITICISMS. 



I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. — Paui,. 



SOME CRITICISMS. 

That cry, so often heard in these days, against 
all creeds, is to be deprecated. Men speak of 
the past in its conception of divine truth, just as 
if the giant intellects of preceeding generations 
were not capable of serious and profound thought, 
and the honest projection of that thought into 
the details of religious conduct; and, as if the 
world was still in ignorance and darkness when 
these self-supposed new lights came into being. 
Such jargon is nauseating. You do not find the 
true scholar, the real thinker, the honest philoso- 
pher trying to belittle the past in its intellectual 
grasp. Only the shallow and short sighted are 
capable of such childish things. The truly great 
bow in reverence to the memory of the illustrious 
men God has used in the development of the race. 
Many of the keenest, strongest and clearest 
thinkers of to-day doubt the ability of man to 
soar to higher realms, to grasp diviner truths, to 
experience the power of holier things than 
the men of past generations, or to express 
thoughts and feelings in stronger and terser 
terms than are already beautifying the pages of 
literature. Method and style, direction and de- 
tail, change, we are told, and not the grasp of the 
intellect or the intensity of the soul. 



12 SOME CRITICISMS. 

The continued progress of the race is to be 
looked for, not in the coming to the world of a 
few intellectual giants, who shall tower in mental 
grandeur above all in the past and in the present, 
but in the development of all men to a state of 
mental ability, moral strength, spiritual per- 
ception equal to the few called of God, in whose 
light only can the past be read and understood. 

Retrospectively, we see a great man here and 
there towering above his fellows like a Corin- 
thian column in a wilderness of ruin, but in 
looking ahead we see humanity standing up 
shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand and heart in 
heart — all men and women measuring up to the 
idea in the mind of the Apostle when he wrote : 
"Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ."* For that reason, neither 
have I any sympathy with that Cant that ever 
tries to belittle the progress of man, his won- 
derful develpment, his astonishing energy, his 
matchless aspiration, and with the finger of 
scorn always pointing to his mistakes and 
mishaps, insisting these to be the indices to 
his real character and inevitable doom. The 
jargon of such croakers is a libel on the 
mission of the Gospel in the world. It is a 
challenge to the Almighty to fulfill his promises, 

* Eph. 4:13. 



SOME CRITICISMS. 13 

and at the same time, a most reckless confession 
on their own part of purposely and maliciously 
closing their eyes to the constantly increasing 
light breaking the effulgency of its lustre around 
about them. No one is so blind as he who wills 
to be so. It is a w r aste of time to stop to argue 
with men of hobbies. A hobby horse never 
advances; it only bob^ up and down, Humil- 
iating as this illustration may be, it is far too 
elevating to describe accurately and truthfully 
the position of those trying to stem the progress 
of the race, for they never bob up at all — it 
is ever a step to deeper gloom. Let them 
alone and let us open our eyes to the magnificent 
marchings of humanity upwards. Measuring 
the distance already traversed adds new inspira- 
tion to the words of that Master Workman who 
said, "I can do all things through Christ who 
strengthened me.'' ::: 

I readily admit that many of the Christian 
Fathers were more solicitous about the develop- 
ment of creeds than about the development of 
men ; more anxious about expressing strongly 
and clearly what they believed than the working 
out of that belief in deeds of kindness and 
benevolence ; more desirous to get men to think 
right than to do right ; more ready to praise God 
for his love to men than to exercise love them- 
selves among men, and to sing of "The Home 

•Phil. 4:13. 



14 SOME CRITICISMS. 

Over There" than to begin keeping house "over 
here" in accordance with the divine law. Never- 
theless, creeds and dogmatic statements have 
their places and uses ; they have served as 
pioneers in the Evangeligation of the world; 
they have made prominent fundamental truths 
and compelled men to fasten their minds upon 
them, or, to change the figure, they are the 
hidden stones forming the foundations upon 
which the superstructure of today is built, and 
upon which even the grander superstructure of 
tomorrow will rest. Take them away and the 
work of the ages will tumble down. Nothing is 
to be gained by trying to belittle the men or the 
methods of former times. Doubtless, they 
answered their environments fully as well as the 
advanced thinkers and methods of today do, and it 
is a certainty that they were the "morning stars" 
ushering in the light of day, and that the great 
men of today are making possible the grander 
tomorrow. 

What existed only in a vague and uncertain 
theory a century ago runs the street cars, 
lights the streets, and illuminates the homes of 
to-day; but, because we fly with wings of steel 
over the continent and turn the darkness of night 
to the light of day, there is no occasion to speak 
ill of the men who first felt the pulse beat of 
electricity. Benjamin Franklin with his kite and 
string coaxing the lightning flash to leap from the 



SOME CRITICISMS, 15 

clouds to the earth was vastly greater than the 
man of to-day who touches a button to start the 
thousand wheels of the great factory. Mr. Edison 
in his laboratory is simply perfecting achieve- 
ments made possible by the discovery of that 
subtle substance, the real nature of which is not 
yet known. Every truth discovered, every step 
taken, every conclusion reached, every triumph 
achieved in the pastjhave all contributed their 
share to the magnificence of to-day. In the same 
light must we regard to-day in its relations to 
to-morrow- As man is advarcing upward new 
glories greet his vision ; the horizon broadens out 
into greater and grander splendor, better things 
continually make themselves possible to him, 
while the old truth, "For I am fearfully and 
wonderfully made; marvelous are thy works; and 
that my soul knoweth full well"* is pressed 
home to his conscience. He gathers fresh cour- 
age praising God for his goodness, and ascends. 

*Ps. 139:14. 



ORIGIN, PURPOSE, 

DEVELOPMENT- 



Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, 
and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with whom 
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. — James. 



ORIGIN, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT. 

The Church in origin is divine. It is an insti- 
tution established in the world by God himself. 
Its purpose is to make men divine in this life and 
glorious in the life to come. In its adaptation 
to the needs of man in different ages it is a 
development — a growth. It could not be other- 
wise and be true to its mission. The very busi- 
ness of the Church is to meet the moral and 
spiritual wants of men in every age, and to help 
one age to prepare the w r orld to cope with the 
-duties and privileges, social and spiritual, of the 
age succeeding. 

At one time the Church was a department of the 
home with the father as prophet and priest. As 
the population increased, and the demands for 
religious instruction multiplied, men were spe- 
cially set apart for religious work, and the Church 
became a distinct institution, embracing several 
•departments of work. New features were added 
from time to time till the Church of the home 
developed to the national Church — to that mag- 
nificent system that challenged the admiration, the 
love and the devotion of the Jew. Weaning the 
Jew from idolatry, and instilling into his soul a 
belief in God as the onfy true, living God, was a 
great task. 



20 O RIG IX, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT. 

Dr. Josiah Strong says : "They were taught by 
their prophets that all their national calamities 
were suffered as penalties of their disloyalty to 
Jehovah. At length, from the discipline of the 
seventy years' captivity, the Jews effectively 
learned the lesson of monotheism. From that 
day to this who has heard of one idolatrous 
Jew."* 

Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson says : "As if to fill 
the vacuum left by the loss of temple and priest- 
hood, the prophetic order arose first in Israel. 
There alone we find schools of the prophets 
furnishing centers for the pure worship of Jeho- 
vah and the observance of the national feasts of 
the New Moon and the Sabbath. The work of 
the prophet w r as to keep alive in the nation the 
sense of its covenant relation with God, to make 
them discern the contrast between the righteous- 
ness of Jehovah and the lawlessness and wilful- 
ness of the gods of the nations round about them, 
and to interpret to them the meaning of the just 
judgments by which their unfaithfulness to the 
covenant was punished. In this work they w r ere 
often brought into an antagonism to kings and 
priests, which was a means of leading them for- 
ward to the apprehensions of truths on a more 
spiritual side, so that we find a constant 'progress 
of doctrine' in the prophetic teaching from the 
days of Elijah to those of Malachi. 

* New Era, p. 14. 



ORIGIN, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT. 21 

"In this broadening of the stream of prophetic 
revelation which gives the especial interest to 
their work, and constitutes them, as Franz 
Baader says, 'an intermediate link between the 
Jewish and the Christian dispensations.' And 
with it came the deeper sense of the nation's and 
the world's need of a deliverer, who should bring 
order out of its confusion and establish the King- 
dom of God throughout the earth. At the same 
time we must remember, as Mr. Mill says, 'that 
the priestly order, the house of Levi, is an element 
in Jewish histor} r just as indispensible as the 
prophetic order, as it constituted the firm verte- 
bral column which secured the historic unity of 
the nation throughout the changing generations.' 
In appearance the prophets failed in their mission. 
First Israel and then Judah — which became still 
more remarkable as a field of prophetic activity — 
was swept away by the great empires of the 
Euphrates. Both the calamities were directly 
traced to the unfaithfulness of the nation to its 
own vocation, its loss of all sense of the worth of 
the institutions which Jehovah had given it. But 
in truth the captivity was simply their removal 
to a severer school in which they learned much 
that they could not be taught by a gentler discip- 
line. Assyrian and Babylonian conquest taught 
them the meaning and the worth of their national 
order and its organic institutions just when these 
seemed to be swept away forever by 'the inorganic 



2L> ORIGIN, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT 

despotisms' of the Assyrian, Babylonian and 
Persian Empires. They came back to their own 
land with some truths so burned into their 
national consciousness that they never lost their 
hold on them again ; and, if in later days they 
were found faulty as regards their grasp of still 
more advanced truths, they, at any rate, had ac- 
quired a degree of loyalty to Jehovah which made 
a national relapse into open and vile idolatries 
impossible to them. And their contact with other 
nations combined with their intenser interest in 
the truths of God's disclosures to them to fit them 
for their great vocation as the historical basis for 
the establishment of a universal society — the 
Church of Christ"* 

But we should not leave them here. They 
were again to suffer the yoke of the Roman 
Empire. Externally, they seemed to possess all 
requirements of true greatness, but internally — 
morally and spiritually — they were not so. God's 
last message to them in the mouth of his prophet 
Malachi, delivered about four hundred years 
prior to the advent of Christ, is a terrible charge 
of unkindness, of irreligiousness, of idolatry, of 
adultery, of infidelity, on the part of the people, 
and of a shocking neglect of their covenant on 
the part of the priests. Their religion was not a 
spiritual reality, but a mechanical and an 
arbitrary performance. They were selfish, 

* Divine Order of Human Society, p. 97. 



ORIGIN, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT, 23 

bigoted, strong-headed, carnal, rebelling against 
God, contending with their neighbors and quar- 
relling among themselves. They were in har- 
money with nothing, and nothing was in 
harmony with tbem. Many years had demon- 
strated that they were utterly unfit, mentally and 
morally, to govern themselves or to be governed 
by God himself through his embassadors. They 
became an easy prey to the Roman power. To 
complete their humiliation, Caesar Augustus 
ordered that all the world should be enrolled/ ;c 
We are told that that decree was made to ascer- 
tain the amount of tax that should be levied on 
each person or family to the support of the 
Roman Government, but may we not believe 
that the shrewd Augustus had a deeper signifi- 
cance to that enrollment. The Jews had boasted 
long and loud that some day a great deliverer — 
a king — should be given them who would bring 
all their enemies to their feet. The Jewish idea 
was to reign and to rule. Here they are com- 
manded to register their names as citizens of 
Rome. Rome could construe that registration as 
a pledge of fidelity to the Empire and the abju- 
ration of fidelity to every other power or king. 
Any one, after this claiming to be King of the 
Jews, would be regarded as a traitor and treated 
as such. The spiritual significance of religion 
had not reached the heart of the masses, and the 

* Luke 2:1-9. 



:>4 ORIGIN, PURPOSE, DEVELOPMENT. 

nation that had played the most startling and 
important part in the history of the world had to 
go down because of its irreligiousness and 
unfaithfulness to God. Never again will the 
Jewish people stand up as a nation among the 
other nations of the world. Their political 
independence was sacrificed on the altar of 
their bigotry, selfishness, wantonness, spiritual 
poverty. Their only hope is in accepting the 
Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, and when 
they will have arrived at that glorious state they 
shall be Jews no longer but Christians, and the 
^'old things will have passed away."'" 

* 2 Cor. 5:17. 



BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS. 



Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again 
of many in Israel ; and for a sign which shall be spoken 
against.— Simeon. 



BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS. 

Jesus Christ incorporated everything imperish- 
able and immortal in the Old system into the 
New and then breathed upon them the breath of 
life. Ceremonies and sacrifices were laid aside, 
and men, through the merits of the atonement, 
entered into the very presence of the Most High. 
New principles were instilled into men's souls ; 
new motives swelled their hearts ; new ambitions 
animated their lives; a new courage exhibited 
itself in their conduct, and, without being fully 
aware of the extent of their influence, they 
became new factors making for the righteousness 
of the world, changing old conditions and orders 
and planting deep the foundations of the ever- 
lasting Kingdom.* The churches of the Apostles 
were singularly simple in their organization and 
order of services. They met for worship at any 
convenient place; sometimes they were com- 
pelled to assemble outside city walls. The 
Church at Jerusalem first met in an upper room 
of a building where some of the early Christians 
made their home.f While they continued in 
prayer and supplications a conviction came upon 
Peter, firing his very being, that Jesus Christ had 
been born, had lived and died in exact accord 

* Dan. 4:3. t Acts 1:3. 



28 BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS. 

with prophecy and he spoke with great elo- 
quence. Two additional Apostles were chosen 
by lots. (Ballots.) The Pentecost came with its 
baptism of the Spirit and its convincing power. 
Now the fishermen of Galilee started out on 
their mission as fishers of men* and no preachers 
to this day have been more successful. Great 
crowds listened to them; thousands believed, 
were baptised and admitted to membership, while 
the wonderful story was noised abroad. The 
early churches were remarkable for their power 
over men. To accept the new religion meant to 
be ostracized from society and disowned by 
relatives, but highest privileges and advantages 
were counted loss for Christ.f In looking back 
to those churches and contrasting them with 
those of today, we are pained at the difference 
between them. We have the wealth, the culture, 
the refinement of the age ; we have magnificent 
temples in which to worship, costly altars, 
learned ministry, ravishing music and all the 
paraphernalia for cooking, and special rooms ior 
social gatherings, but we lack the power to 
attract and to win the world to Christ, while the 
early churches were ridiculed and persecuted, 
they had within them a power from on high 
thrilling the hearts of the common people. To 
our shame, let it be admitted that the early 
churches knew their mission among men better 

* Matt. 4:19. t Phil. 4:7. 



BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS. 29 

than we do and attended to it with greater 
fidelity and zeal. 

Long, long ago Solomon declared "the fruit 
of the righteous is a tree of life ; and he that is 
wise winneth souls, "* while James said "my 
brethren, if any among you do err from the 
truth and one convert him, let him know that he 
which converteth a sinner from the error of his 
way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover 
a multitude of sins."f The tree of life is often 
mentioned in the Bible. It stood in the center 
of Eden. Ezekiel says that it is planted on the 
river banks and that "it shall bring forth new 
fruit every month, because the waters thereof 
issue out of the sanctuary, and the leaf thereof 
for healing." I like the figure. True religion 
is "a tree of life," the roots reaching down to and 
nourished by the swelling currents of God's 
grace and never failing streams of precious 
promises, while the branches reach out to and 
through men to men ; the thoughts and feelings 
of God, by means of sanctified men, reaching 
and touching the unredeemed in deeds of tender- 
ness and love. To be the agent of the Most 
High God in seeking and saving lost souls is to 
attain the highest possible usefulness and the 
highest possible joy in this life. There is much 
said of man at his best, but he is never at his 
best, except as he is used of God in the salvation 

* Prov. 11:10. t James 5:9. 



30 BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS. 

of men. The one realizing the moral force of 
this fact has the clearest conception of his own 
utility. The old version reads "he that winneth 
souls is wise," but the new version reverses the 
order of the words and reads "he that is wise 
winneth souls." According to the old, one's 
wisdom is determined by his success as a soul 
winner, but according to the new, if he is wise 
he will win souls. The wisdom referred to here 
is both a science and an art. A science in the 
knowledge of methods or instruments, and the 
superiority of one method or instrument over 
the other. An art in the skillful application of 
methods and instruments. In other words, the 
true christian, the real soul winner, is a scientist 
and an artist. He has knowledge of the work 
and the skill to do it. James had a higher con- 
ception than Solomon of the delicacy and exacti- 
tude with which Christian work is to be 
performed. Solomon used the simile of the 
fowler or the fisherman, having no regard for the 
life of the object sought. James realized that 
religion deals with a living, thinking, rational 
being, having the power of resistence, yet to be 
won, so he uses the word "convert." It is one 
thing to entrap skillfully dumb animals, and 
quite another thing to convert a thinking soul. 
To convert means more than to cause to turn 
around — right-about face. It does really mean 
that, but it also means spiritual enlightment, the 



BEGINNINGS OF GREAT THINGS, 31 

filling of the mind of man with the mind of 
Christ and the sanctifying of man's affections. 
That is what it is to be converted. To be wise 
in Gospel sense, is to be soul winners. From 
this point of view, we must admit that with all 
of our modern advancement we have not 
advanced in Godly wisdom beyond the early 
Christian churches. We have much need of 
returning to them often. Oh! for the spirit and 
the power of Pentecost to convert the culture, 
the intelligence, the wealth of the churches of 
today to be "soul winners" for Christ. 



THE KINGDOM. 



Repent ye : for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 
—John. 



THE KINGDOM. 

It is impossible to read thoughtfully the sacred 
volume without being impressed that its purpose 
is not alone to prepare men for the joy of 
heaven in the hereafter, but also to teach them 
how to live so as to enjoy the blessing and the 
peace of God now in this life. The Christ spirit 
is to permeate the whole realm of human 
activity so that our social orders shall be firmly 
■established on principles of righteousness, and 
the thoughts and deeds of men harmonizing 
with the thoughts and deeds of Christ. That 
safest and clearest of all writers on sociological 
questions, Dr. Washington Gladden, says: "It 
is not a remote and a dubious inference that the 
regeneration of the individual and the regener- 
ation of society are co-ordinate interests; that 
the one cannot be secured without the other ; 
that, whatever the order of logic may be, there 
can be no difference in time between the two 
kinds of work; that we are to labor as con- 
stantly and as diligently for the improvement of 
the social order as for the conversion of man." 
* * * "There is need among us, then, of 
emphasizing the social side of our Christian 
work, of pointing out the fact that Christianity 
gives a law to society as well as to the individual* 



36 THE KINGDOM. 

We are called to convert men, and we are called 
at the same time, and with equal authority, to 
furnish them a Christian society to live in after 
they are converted. It is idle and even cruel for 
us to cry 'Repent' unless we can say at the same 
time 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' "* 
And that was the key note to the preaching 
of the Apostles. With great eloquence and 
power did they plead with men to " repent " 
of their sins, and, with the same breath, de- 
clared they that "the Kingdom of Heaven was 
at hand." 

Dr. H. R. Reynolds tells us that "the origin 
of the expression (Kingdom of Heaven) may be 
traced to the book of Daniel, where, after the 
dissolution of the four great monarchies, 'the son 
of man is brought near the ancient of days and 
receives dominion, glory and a kingdom. 'f Dr. 
J. J. Van Oosterze notices that Matthew uses the 
expressions, "Kingdom of Heaven" and "King- 
dom of the Father/ ' but that Mark and Luke 
use the term "Kingdom of God" with precisely 
the same meaning. In describing the Kingdom 
of Heaven he says that it is "a something new, 
essentially present, spiritual, unlimited, without 
end, growing, incomparatively glorious and 
blessed. "J But it was also a something expected, 
for both John and Jesus thrilled the thousands 

* Tools and the Man pp. 4, 5. 

t John the Baptist, p. 234. 

X The Theology of the New Testament, p. 68. 



THE KINGDOM. 37 

by declaring that it was at hand, but they never 
stopped to define it in a word. 

Jesus often told to what it was like. The 
enthusiasm awakened by the declaration that it 
was at hand was such that "the Kingdom of 
Heaven suffered violence, and the violent took 
it by force" and that was proof enough that both 
John and Jesus had struck a long expected 
desire of the Hebrews, and the beheading of 
John and the crucifixion of Jesus prove that what 
they had expected was not what Jesus had come 
to give. 

To the Hebrew mind the ideal order of society, 
political and religious, existed in "the sublime 
idea that Jehovah was their Law giver, their 
Judge, their King ; that behind the throne of a 
King could be seen the Jehovah of hosts sitting 
on his throne," as in the days of the Judges. 
The restoration of that order is what they under- 
stood and expected, but Jesus came to establish 
moral and spiritual principles in the hearts of 
men, that henceforth they would be actuated 
upon and governed by those principles, so 
as to desire better and sublimer things and 
do higher and grander things in a spirit 
and an attitude above and superior to any- 
thing hitherto seen among men. The Hebrews 
desired to rule and to reign ; Jesus demon- 
strated that henceforth thrones and crowns were 
to be won by humble, consecrated serving of 



38 THE KINGDOM. 

the higher interests of the common brotherhood 
of men. 

Some have confounded the church and the 
Kingdom of Heaven ; The church, as an organi- 
zation, is no part of the Kingdom, but the church 
in its moral and spiritual power and life is the 
best expression today to the world of what that 
Kingdom is. Many unite with the church for 
social benefit, without possessing even the right- 
eousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees, but 
association w 7 ith believers is not fellowship with 
Christ, and such persons do not add to the power 
of the church as a saving factor in the world. 
Those in the Kingdom here shall share its 
glorious consummation in the hereafter, and to 
become members of that Kingdom here requires 
the possession of inward principles manifesting 
themselves in characteristics distinguishing be- 
lievers in all their ways from unbelievers; a 
radical change, nothing short of a new life, a 
new creation, a new r man in Jesus Christ. 

And that man is to make his life and power 
felt in commercial circles, political organizations, 
intellectual achievements, social orders as well as 
in the church. He is to be a Christ man. His 
highest business is to make every other man a 
Christ man. A small denomination of believers 
play with the word Christian, but one named 
after Christ is no more a Christian than one 
named after Shakespeare is a Shakespearian. 



THE KINGDOM. 39 

One is a Christian in the measure he reflects the 
character and reproduces the life of Christ and 
creates in other men a desire that takes hold of 
all their moral faculties for the possession of the 
same glorious attainment. In the degree that 
this divine work is progressing, the new society — 
the Kingdom of Heaven — is taking possession 
of the kingdoms of this world and Christ is 
becoming the King of men in all their interests. 



SOCIALISM. 



All ye are brethren. — JESUS. 



SOCIALISM. 

The age in which we live makes much of the 
socialistic features of our religion. We are told 
over and over again that we are brethren, and 
that our forefathers ignored one of the funda- 
mental principles of Christianity — the Brother- 
hood of Man — in their great anxiety to inculcate 
another fundamental principle — the Fatherhood 
of God. This last, they claim, includes the 
other. If God is the Father of all of us, then 
all of us are brethren. Of course there is a 
difference between one man and another, between 
one family and another, between one race and 
another that is so great as to leave no traces 
of similarity or relationship. But differences 
and discords are not as deep as we may think. 
Sin has disfigured and distorted the outward 
relations of men; it has eliminated the natural 
affections of the heart, and has set one brother 
against the other. Wars and rumors of wars, 
oppressor and oppressed, victory and defeat, 
songs of triumph and lamentations of distress 
are subjects discussed on all hearthstones. Sin 
is the parent of all misery and injustice. But I 
like to think that there is somewhere in the 
moral constitution of humanity a sanctum sanc- 
torum not yet so completely under its power 



44 SOCIALISM. 



that the sense of our relationship may not be 
revived. There is a similarity of feeling, a unity 
of purpose, a harmony of desires that may be 
ignited and energized by the love of God so that 
the strong may become the "keeper" of his 
weak brother. The unites of being are in the 
depth of our nature. On the surface the lake 
may be broken up in ripples and waves, but in 
the depth there is neither rushing nor crowding, 
but majestic calm. In the battles of life, man is 
too often not his better self; the animal propensi- 
ties may crowd to the front and the man is all but 
a beast, but in his calm and meditative hours 
when he is alone with his imperial self, he is 
better, grander, nobler than in the heat of the 
conflict. The redeeming and refining grace of 
the Lord Jesus can so fortify and beautify the 
temper and affections that he may face the world 
as Christ faced it, live in it as he lived in it, 
conquer it as he conquered it, and make his 
presence and power a benediction to his com- 
munity. 

But I am not sure that justice is given in all 
cases to the Gospel teaching regarding our 
social relations. Social reformers never tire of 
telling us of the Jerusalem church, dividing the 
wealth of all its members and putting it in a 
common treasury or fund from which each might 
draw as much as need demanded, but they are 
not so caieful about telling us that in a little 



SOCIALISM. 45 



while the treasury of that church was empty; 
that all the members were then poor; that no 
others came forward with their wealth to supply 
the need, and that the other churches exercised 
pity upon them and made collections to keep 
them from starving. The "all- things-in-com- 
mon" idea suffered collapse at the first attempt. 
What would have been a far better policy for the 
wealthy men of that congregation would have 
been the investment of that money in some 
profitable and honorable business so as to give 
regular employment to the working classes, pay- 
ing them honest wages for their work. In that 
way an equal opportunity would have been given 
to all, a permanent business established, and 
prospects for the future made reasonably certain. 
What they did was the reducing of all to help- 
less poverty. The Gospel teaches thrift, not 
idleness or laziness. Christian people owe much 
to the suffering poor, but the giving of money 
indiscriminately, though animated by noble 
impulses, is not calculated to do the giver or the 
recipient any lasting good. So radical was Paul 
on this point that he insisted "that if any would 
not work, neither should he eat."* While insist- 
ing on the socialistic features of the Gospel, men 
should not forget that that socialism means the 
creating of opportunities for earning a living by 
the sweat of one's own brow and not that of 

* 2 Thess. 3:10. 



46 SOCIALISM. 



another. Labor is a prime necessity. Every 
man should be a producer. He should contrib- 
ute his share to the comfort and prospeiity of 
the community at large. The sooner we get 
away from the notion of building for self, the 
better for us and for those around us. The 
capitalist should see that his money is invested 
in enterprises conducive to the common interests 
of mankind; that he pays to his working men 
all they earn ; that he is constantly planning for 
their good as well as for his own. He should 
never separate himself or his interests from his 
employees and their interests. The workingmen 
also should put their heart and mind as 
thoroughly and constantly in his plans and enter- 
prises as if they were their own. True religion 
renders one a better, more faithful and trusty 
artisan. When Capital and Labor will have 
combined interests, the scenes of Homestead in 
1892, of Chicago in 1894, of Cleveland in 1896, 
will be impossible. The strong will not draw 
the sword or point the rifle at the weak ; the 
employee will not attach the torch to the works 
of his employer and so destroy, not alone 
valuable property, but the source of revenue to 
both of them. There is no question but that 
many hiring and hired are ignorant of right 
relations and the moral philosophy of labor. 
In its highest conception the Gospel recognizes 
the capitalist as well as the wage earner as 



SOCIALISM. 47 



a laborer and as a "co-laborer with God"* 
in the development of the race. Man is 
not made for fame, glory or success, but for 
service, and in serving others one serves himself 
the best. Dr. Samuel Smiley, in one of his 
books, says that three words of Christ — love one 
another — contains a gospel sufficient to renovate 
the world. And this is the Gospel the church 
has to preach to the world, but its preaching will 
be in vain unless that very thing is practiced in 
the lives of its own members. Josh Billings 
said "the best way to train a child in the way he 
should go is to go that way yourself." What- 
ever the church has to teach to the world she 
must live in the world. Social problems will 
never be rightly settled till Christian people 
will live the Gospel in business as well as in 
the sanctuary. Religion is not so much a dogma 
as a life, not so much a something to believe as 
a something to do, not so much a something 
within you that you feel as a something making 
your neighbors to feel that it is there as a Major 
General directing and moving your thoughts and 
feelings to deeds of kindness and love in "His 
name." O for power to live the Gospel! 

* 1 Cor. 3:9. 



NEW DEVELOPMENTS WITHOUT 



Out of selfish consideration for its interests, the 
church has taught religiousness more than an actual 
righteousness, and has separated itself from the great 
world's conflicts amidst which it ought to be the solving 
factor. — Herronn. 



NEW DEVELOPMENTS WITHOUT. 

How far the failure of the all- thin gs-in-con> 
mon, of the Jerusalem church, effected social 
relations, among the other churches in the first 
century, can not be easily determined, but in 
succeeding centuries, leading Christian thinkers 
and scholars ignored social functions and gave 
themselves to philosophical discussions, to the 
development of dogma and the culture of the 
intellect. The mission of the church, as a social 
center to which men turn in their needs, and 
from which goes out help to the needy and suc- 
cor to the distressed, found little place in their 
learned dissertations, while the great masses were 
left in blindness and want. From the very 
nature of the case, there sprang up on all sides 
various kinds of humanitarian organizations 
whose object was the providing of essential 
means for the development of man as a member 
of society. The failure of the church to do her 
duty to the social world gave being to these 
societies. In time, many of them became, not 
alone rivals of the church, but of more practical 
value to men. When the church said her 
prayers and sang her songs, these societies fed 
the hungry and comforted the bereaved, and so 
secured a firm and lasting hold on the human 



52 NEW DEVELOPMENTS WITHOUT. 

heart. It is claimed that Dr. Lyman Beecher 
said, "Man can not be converted while suffering 
from cold feet or an empty stomach.' ' Whether 
he said so or not, there is sound, practical phil- 
osophy in the saying. Man is not all soul. He 
has a body capable of becoming the temple of 
the living God.* That body is worthy of care 
commensurate with its possibilities. Man has a 
strong social nature. That nature ought to 
be trained, fed and governed in harmony with 
its moral constitution. The religion that does 
not comprehend man in all that he is can never 
secure the love, the respect and the support of 
common humanity : it is not the religion of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Let no one accuse me of 
eulogizing secret societies or claim them fault- 
less. Doubtless, much that is true may be said 
against them, while it is a certainty that much 
that is not true has been said against them, and 
by men who would have been shocked had you 
doubted their veracity. All I claim now is that 
these societies came into being to do a work in 
the social world that the church ought to do and 
refused to do it. Today secret societies wield a 
greater influence on leading men in many com- 
munities than the church of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, whose influence ought to be supreme. 
Some of you may not believe this, but let us see. 
Dr. Graham Taylor gives a table of statistics 

* 2 Cor. 6:16. 



NE W BE VEL OPM E NTS WIT HO UT. 



53 



compiled from city directories that is very signi- 
ficant.* 





Date 


Population 


Churches 


Lodges 


Buffalo. . . 


1888-9 


240,000 


144 


218 


New Orleans 


u 


216,000 


178 


270 


Washington 


it 


203,000 


181 


3i6 


St. Louis . . 


(( 


450,000 


220 


729 


Worcester . 


(( 


85,000 


54 


88 


Boston . . . 


1890 


448,000 


243 


599 


Brooklyn . . . 


tt 


853,945 


355 


695 



Chicago . 



1,099,850 384 1,086 



Here are eight representative cities, collectively 
having over 4000 lodges and a little over 2000 
churches. Some of the members of these lodges 
are also members of the churches, but as a rule 
the enthusiasm is greater for the lodge than for 
the church, the attendance is more regular in the 
^odge than in the church and the fees are greater 
and more regularly given to the lodge than the 
contributions to the church — the Bride of Christ. 
Is there a tangible reason for this? Certainly. 
Men have found that the law of brotherhood is 
the law of the lodge, and they are charmed by it. 
Too much cannot be said of man's relations to 
God, but too little has been said of man's rela- 
tions to man. The danger now is that many a 
lodgeman will put too much dependence on the 
lodge, think his enthusiasm for his brethren to 

* New Era, p. 128. 



54 NE IV DE VEL OP ME NTS WITHO UT. 

be religion, rest there and never rising up to a 
union with Christ. There is no use in finding fault 
with the lodges, denounce them as enemies to the 
church and to the best interests of men. They 
are here and they are demonstrating every day 
that they are doing a work discarded long ago by 
the church. The only thing she can now do is 
to wake up, put on her beautiful garments, go 
out in the name of her Christ and re enter the 
sphere of her usefulness as a friend to the poor 
and the needy. If she can do the work now 
done by the lodges better than they do it, and 
she can, she will assume her rightful place in the 
social world and will attract countless millions 
to her fold. Then social problems will be 
adjusted in accordance with the Sermon on the 
Mount, and peace and prosperity will be the 
possession of the human family upon the earth. 



DIVISIONS WITHIN. 



Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also 
which shall believe on me through their word; that 
they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I 
in thee, that they also may be one in us ; that the world 
may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory 
which thou gavest me I have given them ; that they may 
be one, even as we are one. — JESUS. 






DIVISIONS WITHIN. 

To find the causes that divided the Church 
into factions we must look to Church historians, 
and yet it often requires an expert to discover 
whether the history of the Church universal or 
the history of some branch of it is read. Many 
historians use facts and figures frequently to 
demonstrate that the particular branch to which 
they belong is the Church, but the causes leading 
to the disrupted conditions of to-day can neither 
be ignored nor denied. It is apparent to all, 
regardles of the honesty of purpose or conscien- 
tiousness of action that may have been under- 
currents leading to disagreements as to the 
philosophical conception of divine truth or 
methods of work, the divisions themselves have 
retarded the progress of truth in the higher 
development of humanity. 

Christianity is marching to the conquest of the 
world, but the marches are shorter and the pro- 
gress less decisive than would have been the case 
had the Christian Church followed up her splen- 
did beginning. Instead of one great, glorious, 
invincible army moving forward with persistency 
and majesty, striking conviction and conversion 
with its steady steps, winning new converts by 
its fine display of loyalty to its divine mission. 



58 DIVISIONS WITH IX. 

the world is full of sects, antagonistic to 
each other, giving time and money, talent and 
energy, men and women to the building up 
of sectarian interests rather than the pure and 
tmdefiled religion. Some one has said that 
a "sect narrows down the comprehension of divine 
truth to suit the limitation of its own vision," in- 
sisting that every other vision is imperfect and 
incorrect. It magnifies differences and minimizes 
agreements. 

Dr. R. E. Thompson characteristically groups 
the great scholastic antagonists of the past into 
three parties. The Patricentric, including all 
those focusing their conception of Christian doc- 
trine around the divine sovereignty as a center; 
the Christocentric, embracing all those establish- 
ing their beliefs on the incarnation and passion 
of Jesus Christ; the Preumatocentric, denoting 
those claiming that it is the Spirit that works 
repentance, faith, hope, triumph.* Possibly no 
other grouping is more complete and compre- 
hensive — certainly none more suggestive. The 
learned author takes especial pains to make it 
plain that he does not regard these types as 
"found in mutual isolation, and that everybody 
can be put under one or another of the three." 
He speaks of "them rather as dominant, but not 
exclusive, tendencies in the religious culture of 
several denominations," and that "since the great 

* Divine Order of Human Society, p. 216. 



DIVISIONS WITHIN. 59 

awakening of 1740 the third type has greatly- 
influenced the other two," and ' since the Oxford 
revival of 1833-45 the second type has influenced 
both the others." He also sees before us the 
blending of these elements in a trinitarian church 
life, "in which truth, grace and unction will each 
obtain full and rightful recognition." 

Without attempting to bring the whole world 
under our view, looking at the present divisions 
in the American Church alone will convince us of 
the loss in vital force and the waste of means 
caused by our inorganized Christian life. A 
leadirg weekly journal* has placed us under 
obligations for a most clear survey of the whole 
field. According to the statistics given, the 
American Church is divided into forty-four great 
divisions, but the forty-four great divisions are 
again divided into many generic organizations, 
making in all one hundred and twenty distinct 
denominations in this country. The list is 
as follows: Six different kinds of Adventists, 
thirteen of Baptists, three of Brethren (River), 
four of Brethren (Plymouth), seven of Catholics, 
two of Christians, eight Communistic Societies, 
four Dunkards, two Evangelical bodies, four of 
Friends, two of Jews, two of Latter-Day Saints, 
twenty Lutherans, twelve Mennonites, seventeen 
Methodists, twelve Presbyterians, two Protestant 
Episcopal, three Reformed, two United Brethren, 

* The New York Independent, Jan. 2, 1896. 



00 DIVISIONS WITHIN. 

the Catholic Apostolic, Chinese Churches, Chris- 
tadelphians, Christian Misssionary Association, 
Christian Scientists, Christian Union, Church of 
God (Winebrenerians), Church Triumphant 
(Schweinfurth), Church of the New Jerusalem, 
Congregational, Disciples of Christ, Friends of 
the Temple, German Evangelical Protestant and 
German Evangelical Synod. The Calvinistic 
Methodists or Welsh Presbyterians are included 
with the Presbyterians. In 1895 they had 107 
ministers, 192 churches, 12,285 communicants. 



DIVISIONS WITHIN. 61 



SUMMARIES FOR 1895.! 

Denominations. Min. 

Adventists, all branches 1,362 

Baptists, all branches* 31,572 

Brethren (River), all branches . . 155 

Brethren (Plymouth), all branches . . 

Catholics.* all branches 9,886 

Catholic Apostolic 95 

Chinese Temples 

Christadelphians 

Christians, all branches 1,485 

Christian Missionary Association . 10 

Christian Scientists 26 

Christian Union 183 

Church of God 450 

Church Triumphant (Schweinlurth) . . 

Church of the New Jerusalem ... 131 
Communistic Soc's, all branches . . 

Congregationalists 5,400 

Disciples of Christ 5,260 

Dunkards, all branches 2,115 

Evangelical, all branches 1,234 

Friends all branches i, 314 

Friends of the Temple 4 

German Evan. Protestant 45 

German Evan. Synod 838 

Jews, all brancheo 290 

flatter Day Saints, all branches . . 2,075 

Lutherans, all branches 5,6S5 

Waldenstromians* 140 

Mennonites, all branhes 950 

Methodist, all branches 33, 601 

Moravians 85 

Presbyterians, all branches .... 11,097 

Prot. Episcopal, all branches . . . . 4,580 

Reformed, all branches 1,662 

Salvation Army 2,037 

Schwenkfeldians 3 

Social Brethren 17 

Society for Ethical Culture .... 

Spiritualist 

Theosophical Society 

United Brethren, all branches . . . 2,746 

Unitarians 519 

Universalists S®o 

Independent Congregations .... 54 



Chs. 


Com. 


i,993 


73,312 


45,802 


3,928,106 


in 


3,427 


3M 


6,661 


12,627 


7,742,774 


10 


1,394 


47 




63 


1,277 


1,480 


110,050 


»3 


754 


221 


8,724 


294 


18,214 


560 


36,000 


12 


384 


147 


7,406 


31 


3,950 


5,5oo 


600,000 


9,47i 


923,663 


1,016 


8i,394 


2,817 


145,904 


1,087 


114,711 


4 


340 


55 


36,500 


1,075 


185,203 


548 


139,500 


1,011 


234,000 


9,493 


1,390.775 


150 


20,000 


600 


47,669 


5 2 ,236 


5,438,963 


81 


12,929 


14,530 


1,458,990 


5,979 


626,290 


2.355 


341,832 


682 


33,509 


4 


3°6 


20 


913 


4 


1,064 


334 


45,030 


95 


*2,500 


5,026 


262,950 


455 


68,500 


802 


47,986 


156 


14,126 


[79.3" 


24,218,180 



Total 127,9c 

It is interesting also to examine the table 
given by the same energetic journal of the work 
sustained abroad by American men and money. 

f As given by the Independent. * Returns of 1894. 



62 



DIVISIONS WITH1X. 



CONGREGATIONAL. 
Native 

Country Preachers. Churches. 

Africa 34 23 

China 75 38 

India 260 94. 

Japan 60 99 

Pacific Islands .... 58 48 

Papal Lands 27 34 

Turke}- 22S 125 

Total abroad. . . . 742 461 

United States . ... 5,400 5.500 

Grand Total. . . . 6,142 5,961 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL. 

Africa 40 34 

rhina 135 13S 

Europe 362 321 

India 236 191 

Japan and Korea ... 91 42 

Mexico 30 30 

South America .... 53 22 

Total abroad. . . . 947 778 

United states 16,079 24,605 

Grand Total . . . 17.026 2 5-3S3 

NORTHERN PRESBYTERIAN. 

Africa 15 22 

China 88 74 

India 69 31 

Japan 53 36 

Korea 8 1 

Persia 61 38 

Siani 19 19 

Syria 20 26 

Mexico 37 86 

Brazil 11 43 

Chile 10 8 

Columbia 5 2 

Guatemala . . 1 

Total abroad . . . 39S 387 

United States .... 6.49S 7»2i8 

Grand total .... 6,896 7*605 

UNITED PRESBYTERIAN. 

Canada 4 5 

Egypt 34 33 

India 20 12 

Total abroad. ... 5S 50 

United States 801 895 

Grand total .... 859 945 



Commun icants- 

:.S79 
2.7S6 
8,52 r 
1 1 .162 
5 392 
1,886 



44.413 
600,000 

644.413 



4.137 
10,615 
46,845 
63.690 

4.2S0 
3. 534 
3-570 

136.671 
2.629.9S5 

2,766,656 



1,754 
6,922 
2,286 
5*563 
2^6 
2,838 

2,133 
2.04S 
3,826 

3,651 
388 

155 

34 

31,834 

982,657 

934.591 



641 
4*554 
5.756 

10,951 
106,75 s 



117,706 



DIVISIONS WITHIN. 



63 



COUNTRY. 

Africa 

Brazil 

China 

Cuba 

Europe 

Haita 

Japan 

Mexico 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL. 
Ministers. 
16 

. • 7 

• • 34 



Total abroad 
United States . . 

Grand total . 



Canada . . . 
Germany . 
Japan . . . . 
Switzerland 



Total abroad, 
United States . . 



Grand total . 



14 
27 

8 

u6 

4,487 

4,603 



73 
7o 
23 

42 

20S 
i,i74 

1,382 



Churches. 


Co m m u n ice. n ts 


53 

48 

4 
6 

15 
76 
24 


1,241 
j 92 
936 
50 

I, coo 

389 

1,543 


233 

5,885 


5,35i 
616,843 


6,118 


622,194 


OCIATION. 




89 

41 

9 

32 


6,721 

6,75i 

727 

5,047 


171 
1,817 


19,246 
90,849 



1,988 



Canada . . 
Germany- 
Africa . . 



UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST. 
38 



Total abroad . 
United States . . . 



22 

S 

17 

47 

2,057 



6S 
4,176 



Grand total . . . . 2,104 4.242 

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS. 

6 7 



Africa 

Australasia and Pacific 
Islands .... 

Canada 

Europe ... 
Centr alAmerica 

India 

Mexico 

South America . 
West Indies. 

Total abroad. 
United States . . 



Grand total . 



20 
6 
29 



253 

326 



31 

16 

108 



171 
1,201 



,372 



110,095 



1,504 
5,638 

8,005 
225,199 

233,204 



220 

1,465 

384 

4,155 

55 



*53 
120 

6,552 
41,128 



47,63o 



THE FORM 
WITHOUT THE POWER. 



"Having a form of godliness, but denying the power 
thereof; from such turn away." — Paui,. 



THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 

No one can truthfully claim all of the organi- 
zations in the foregoing tables as representing 
the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of 
them, at least, do not; they exist for the purpose 
of denying his divinity. If Christ was not 
divine the Church he has established in the w r orld 
is not divine, and its services are no more sacred 
or solemn or inspiring than the services of any 
organization devoted to the moral good and the 
intellectual growth of the race. In the tables 
are also found some temples dedicated to the 
worship of idols. Some others make no claim 
of possessing the spirit and power of Jesus in 
any degree, w r hile some of them making very 
high pretensions utterly fail in practice. The 
tables, as they stand, represent the thought 
and life of the religious people inhabiting this 
great continent of ours. We have reasons to 
rejoice that the showing, on the whole, is as good. 
At the same time, considering the educational 
advantages and political privileges of the people, 
the Church ought to be man}' thousand fold 
stronger than it is for the faith that saves. 

The tables, surely, demonstrate much earnest 
endeavor to spread the story of the cross, much 
self-denial and sacrifice, much consecration and 



68 THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 

devotion to religious interests. They also show 
in an emphatic manner that underneath our 
benevolences, behind our labors, back of our 
progress, is a burning desire for supremacy. That 
spirit paralyses our energies and freezes our 
prayers. The late Dr. Mark Hopkins, President 
of Williams College and President of the Ameri- 
can Board — the Congregational Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society — said: "No less than nineteen 
varieties of Christianity are at present trying to 
convert the Japanese. The nineteen do not agree 
as to what the ministry is, nor as to the 
Word of God, nor are they agreed as to the 
sacraments, doctrine, discipline and worship. 
There are all sorts of contradictions of 
belief. Now, if Christianity, with eighteen cen- 
turies of accumulated tradition cannot agree, 
how can we expect the heathen to solve the 
great riddle."* I have seen it stated in the 
papers that an Atrican king said to the mission- 
aries, "You seem to make two religions out of 
one religion, and I do not understand you." 
Another king is said to have been highly de- 
lighted in getting two missionaries of different 
non-essential views to go before him, each to 
argue for his belief. Nothing afforded the 
king greater amusement. Why cannot the de- 
nominations agree to give up China to one of 
them as its missionary field, Japan to the other, 

* From a clipping-. 



THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 69 

Africa to the other, etc., etc., or, if that cannot 
be successfully accomplished some plan of action 
should be speedily adopted decreasing the ex- 
penses of carrying on the work and preventing 
the earnestness of the workers from becoming a 
laughing stock to those they seek to convert. 
China would be no less Christian should she 
adopt the Presbyterian faith. Nothing of moral 
force or spiritual power w y ould be lost to Japan 
should she become Methodist, or to Africa should 
she becorce Baptist, but great economy in men 
and money would be secured, while the coming 
of the Kingdom would be greatly accelerated 
among the nations of the earth. It is a pit}' 
that secterianism strikes often deeper roots than 
religion itself, and that there are so many men 
and women in the world calling themselves 
Christians, hardly caring whether men are con- 
verted or no, unless they are converted to their 
own peculiar beliefs and to walk the plank of 
faith they throw before them. 

Recently I visited a village of about 500 popu- 
lation. It is situated in the centre of a small 
valley with no great territory to draw 7 upon for 
sustenance. It has three general stores, two 
drug stores, two blacksmith shops, one millinery 
store, one shoe shop, one carpenter shop, one 
wagon shop, one barber shop, one flow r ering mill, 
but it has six churches. In three of them ser- 
vices are conducted in the English language, and 



70 THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 

in a foreign tongue in the other three. These 
last three exert practically no influence upon the 
community at large, and do not seem to feel any 
responsibility in the matter. The three English 
churches in number, brains and wealth, should 
they unite, would constitute a force that might 
prove a great benefit to the community. Sepa- 
rated as they are, their influence is divided and 
weakened. Jealousy and contention are rife 
among them. The three together do not pay to the 
support of the ministry $700 a year, and there are 
three ministers to be supported, in part, out of that 
small sum. The other part comes from other 
small, scattering organizations. One of these 
preachers has seven preaching stations and gener- 
ally he is expected to preach four times on the Sab- 
bbath. To do so he has to travel over very rough 
roads from fifteen to twenty-five miles. For all this 
haid and never ending labor he may consider him- 
self very fortunate if he receives $600 in twelve 
months. He is one out of a thousand in similar 
circumstances. It makes one's blood boil to hear 
the $8,000 city pastor, with an assistant or two, 
talking of hard work or self-denial. Of course, 
some city pastors do exercise self-denial and do 
hard and heroic work, but, on the whole, city 
pastors come far short of the heroic life of the 
country preachers. Yet the strength of the city 
churches, the moral back-bone of the nation, the 
glory of the rising generation depend very 



THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 71 

largely on the labors of the country preachers. 
The time will come, if the Gospel is to triumph, 
when the city pastors of great salaries w 7 ill in- 
fluence better support to their brethren in the 
rural districts. Protestanism has much to learn 
from Catholicism in this respect. With very 
rare exceptions as great preachers — preachers 
of divine unction and fearless denunciation of 
evil in low and high places, are found now and 
ever have been in the villages and smaller towns 
as in the larger cities. A need of this age, 
especially, is the concentration of wisdom and 
benevolence and co-operation in the rural districts, 
that they may not be so divided and broken up 
into so many religious organizations. Were it 
possible to unite the three churches in the village 
referred to under one pastor, the united church 
could support him and the work moderately 
respectably; he could devote all his time to their 
moral and spiritual development. The other two 
pastors might settle over other united groups in 
surrounding hamlets. As matters now exist the 
ministers spend much of their time "on the road," 
and are deprived of many comforts to which they 
are justly entitled, and the Churches, of necessity, 
fail in the development of their powers. Like 
tiny flowers behind walls they are denied the 
health and strength giving pow T er of the sun's 
rays ; they do not and can not grow in power and 



72 THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 

beauty. A need of the times is the breaking 
down of the walls. 

But country districts are not alone cursed with 
this evil. Large portions of cities are almost in 
Egyptian darkness while other sections are over- 
burdened with churches, simply because several 
denominations desire to be represented among the 
fashionable and the elite. There is no other 
rational excuse for their existence. As a con- 
sequence, many of them are driven to desperation 
to maintain themselves. Whenever finances are 
burdens and much talk of money indulged in 
the public services the spiritual life suffers. Every 
organization that is called a Church is not a 
Church of Christ; it belongs to the denomination 
or to itself. The Lord Jesus had no part in its 
formation; it does not live according to his law 
or do his work } and it can be of no moral good 
to its community, while its existence is a positive 
injury to everyone of its members, for it keeps 
them in an atmosphere destructive to their 
growth in the higher life. One of the healthiest 
and most promising tendencies of the age is the 
desire among so many followers of Christ to sur- 
render minor differences and to unite on the major 
principles of true religion. The blast from the 
bugle of the learned Presbyterian minister, Dr. 
Thomas C. Hall, of Chicago, is as refreshing as a 
mountain breeze on a sultry August evening and 
as cheering as the dawn of day, not so much for 



THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 73 

what he says, but for what he aims, for what his 
heart yearns for — the union of all denominations 
on lines of practical co-operation. Here are his 
words : 

"But theological differences do still divide us. 
How shall we meet this? In the first place, may 
it be said, not by surrendering our personal con- 
victions. We would none of us be the stronger 
for that. We must seek to eliminate, however, 
from our common platforms things that pertain not 
to essential religious life, but only to our intellec- 
tual grasp of it. Take, for instance, the question 
of Calvinism versus Arminianism. There is abso- 
lutely no excuse for making this philosophical 
question a line of division. There was a time 
when sincere men so identified Arminianism with 
rationalism and spirital deadness that there was 
some excuse lor treating it as an important error. 
But the Arminianism that the Dutch Presbyte- 
rians drove out of Holland, God made the corner 
stone for the evangelical revival — which never 
reached Holland ! One of the most useful Pres- 
byterian ministers in New York was an out-and- 
out Arminian. The Anglican church has thriven 
on it, and it does not deaden the zeal of the Sal- 
vation Army. These things do not prove that it 
is right. Personally, we feel that Calvinism is a 
far more satisfactory answer to the questions 
both attempt in vain to fully answer. But it has 
been proved that Arminianism is not a deadly 



74 THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 

error. And what God has cleansed, let no man 
call common or unclean. The elimination of 
Calvinism, save as our personal interpretation of 
the Christian life, from our creeds, is something 
to labor for. The dispute has lost all its former 
religious significance, and its intellectual value is 
reduced to a minimum by the separation of the 
disputants into hostile camps, where prejudices 
and not arguments are the handy weapons. We, 
who are Calvinists, are not converting the Meth- 
odists very fast ; perhaps it is because they will 
not listen to us as they might, did we have 
reunion on a basis of the elimination of both 
Calvinism and Arminianism, simply asserting 
God's sovereignity and man's free agency, and 
leaving each pulpit to wrestle with the problem 
in the light of experience and God's revelation."* 

Being a son of Dr. John Hall, the venerable 
pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
New York, and having been educated in leading 
schools for the Presbyterian ministry, it can 
never be truthfully said that his training is not 
of the right sort. But the man has been touched 
and inspired by the mind of Christ and of Paul, 
and he yearns to meet all true disciples of his 
Master on common ground for united marches 
against the common foe. 

Words of the same import came from other 
distinguished men in the same and in other 

* Church Union, July, 1896. 



THE FORM WITHOUT THE POWER. 75 

denominations. They do not call for organic 
union, but for spiritual unity ; for the spirit and 
power of true religion to permeate the whole 
being that one Church may pray with the same 
earnestness for the blessings of God to the 
Church across the way as it does for itself. 
When that spirit animates American Christian- 
ity there will remain no difficulties in the way 
of readjustment and reorganization. "L,et this 
mind be in you, which was also in Christ."* 

*Phil. II.: 5. 



BEGGING EXISTENCE. 



''Why is there such spiritual death today? Why is 
false doctrine so rampant in the churches? It is 
because we have ungodly people in the church and in 
the ministry. Eagerness for numbers, and especially 
eagerness to include respectable people, has adulterated 
many churches, and made them lax in doctrine and 
fond of silly amusements. There are people who 
despise a prayer meeting, but rush to see 'living wax 
works' in their school rooms. God save us from 
converts who are made by lowering the standard." — 
Spurgeon. 



BEGGING EXISTENCE. 

Every intelligent reader of religious literature 
must of necessity be impressed by the need of 
more concise, precise and comprehensive defini- 
tions of expressions and terms used than are 
furnished us by many leading writers. The true 
value of a statement is not alone in the accuracy 
of what it has to say, but also in the fine delicate 
shade of thought conveyed in its words. For 
the want of purity, propriety and precision of 
words used and clearness in their arrangement 
we are at a loss often to know the mind of the 
writer. This is also true with reference to 
qualifying adjuncts and definitions. For the 
want ot clear diction many books have failed in 
their mission. I have been intensely interested 
and, on the whole, greatly benefited by reading 
a little book* evidently written by a vigorous 
and a strong thinker ; the book ought to be of 
vast help to every professing Christian, earnestly 
seeking to do the Master's will. A spirit of 
honest devotion seems to breathe in its pages, 
and yet its moral worth is largely diminished by 
its undefined and ill-defined expressions. In 
the contents we find the phrase, "Church not a 
Social Club," but nowhere in the context does 

* Fun and Finances. 



80 BEGGING EXISTENCE. 

the author tell us what he means by the word 
"church" or by the words "social club," and we 
are left to our own conjecture. If he means by 
"club" a number of persons banded together for 
a given purpose, his notion of a church can not 
be that of an association of believers of kindred 
faith united for certain ends, for such an associa- 
tion in a restricted sense is a club. If he means 
by "social" the cultivation of acquaintance and 
friendly feeling, and in case of necessity, the 
helping of one another in material as well as 
spiritual things, his idea of a church must be 
different from the prevalent one, for such 
province is surely described in the New Testa- 
ment as belonging to the Church. If he regards 
that word as denoting an institution established 
of God among men for the purpose of helping 
them to live righteously in this world so as to 
enjoy the illuminating, strengthening and con- 
soling power of the Holy Spirit, and to prepare 
them to share the glory of God in the world to 
come, it is hard to see why he uses "social club" 
in this connection, for from the very nature of 
the case, such a church has in it all the essentials 
of a social club, but it is more, vastly more. It 
is an institution comprehending as its realm all 
human energies and activities, commercial, polit- 
ical, educational, social, etc., etc., providing con- 
ditions and dispositions by means of which the 
soul rises up from its trials, troubles, conflicts 



BEGGING EXISTENCE. 81 

and disappointments into the Holy of holies, 
places its trembling hand on the hand uphold- 
ing the universe and says. "I believe ; help 
thou mine unbelief,"* and hears the voice of 
the Supreme Ruler answering,, "My grace is 
sufficient for thee ; for my power is made perfect 
in weakness."t A church of such glorious 
provinces Jesus Christ purchased with his own 
blood. To such a church we are gradually but 
surely advancing. 

In speaking of the Apostles, the author of 
the book referred to, says: "They went in for 
salvation, striking at the very core of men's 
being, and aiming at complete separation from 
the world and the deepest renewal of the soul." 
(And yet the separation from the world actually 
attained by the majority of the membership of 
the early churches was not superior, nor indeed 
equal, to that attained today.) "The idea of allow- 
ing money considerations to affect their ministra- 
tion of the Gospel never entered their minds. 
They preached with power, because they relied 
entirely upon the Holy Ghost, not stopping to 
ask whether or not some prominent hearer 
might be offended by the truth," (It would be 
of great advantage had the author stopped long 
enough to tell us just what he understands by 
"relied entirely upon the Holy Ghost." Paul 
said very plainly : "Know ye not that they which 

* Mark 9:24. t 2 Cor. 12:9. 



82 BEGGING EXISTENCE. 

minister about sacred things eat of the things of 
the temple, and they which wait upon the altar 
have their portion w T ith the altar?" Even so 
did the Lord ordain that they which proclaim 
the Gospel should live of the Gospel. *) "They 
never worried about the probability of losing a 
pulpit by being faithful ambassadors of Christ." 
(And they never remained very long at any one 
place. But where is the minister who does not 
preach the Gospel faithfully as God has revealed 
it to him, for fear of losing his pulpit i Has not 
the author assumed more than he ought in this 
matter? Has he not himself come under "For 
with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be 
judged; and with what measure ye mete, it 
shall be measured unto you."f) "They lived, as 
every minister who would be independent and 
effective must live, 'by every word that proceed - 
eth out of the mouth of God,' sublimely indiffer- 
ent whether certain persons or places received 
them or not." (If they were "sublimely indif- 
ferent" regarding their reception among men, 
they were also "sublimely indifferent" as to the 
good they might do among them, for then, as 
well as now, the message could do men no good 
unless the messenger was given a reception worthy 
of his calling. But they were solicitous about 
their reception among the people. Paul urges 
the Roman Christians to receive "him that is 

* 1 Cor. 9:13, 14. t Matt. 7:2. 



BEGGING EXISTENCE. 83 

weak in the faith"* and "one another."* He 
also commends to them "Phoebe, our sister, who 
is a servantf of the church that is at Cenchrea ; 
that ye receive her in the Lord, worthy of the 
saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever 
matter she may have need of you ; for she her- 
self also hath been a succourer of many, and of 
mine own self. "J To Epaphroditus he asked a 
joylul reception from the Philipians,S but this 
American prophet declares that they were 
"sublimely indifferent whether persons or places 
received them or not." He might help us also 
very much had he told us in exact terms just 
what he means by a minister living "independ- 
ent" and "effective." The faithful minister, the 
real soul winner, the true preacher is very much 
dependent upon God and men. 

The purpose of the book is very commend- 
able. It is a strong and a convincing argument 
against "raising money for churches by iairs, 
festivals, bazaars, pleasure parties and similar 
means." In this it merits careful reading by 
every christian throughout the world. The 
author makes use with telling effect of the 
following from the pen of Dr. Austin Phelps : 

"A church fair in the temple of Jerusalem ! 
Conceive of a raffle for a gold-headed cane or a 
Chickering piano in the holy of holies ! Imag- 
ine the hum-drum of an auction sale of the fag 

t Deaconess. t Rom. 14:1; 15,7. t Rom. 16:1. § Phil. 2:29. 



84 BEGGING EXISTENCE. 

ends of the fair from the altar of sacrifice ! Do 
not such things remind us of One who, on a 
memorable occasion, found a use for a whip of 
small cords?" Indeed they do, and it is a 
certainty that Jesus does not look with greater 
favor upon schemes and devices used in this age 
of wealth to secure money with which to carry 
on the work of the church. Christian people 
should never allow the Church of the Living 
God to stand hat in hand begging existence 
from an unsympathizing and an unbelieving 
populace. The privilege of the church is to 
give, not to receive, to make the non church 
goers to feel under obligations to her for favors 
received at her hands. In this way she will 
win them to higher thinking and living, and to 
seek salvation in Christ. 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 



The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to 
play.— PAUiv. 

But what of the moral and religious life of society? 
The church is the especial guardian of these interests, 
but it is shattered into scores of fragments. Its body 
is dismembered, and the eye says to the hand, 'I have 
no need of thee,' and the hand says to the foot, 'I have 
no need of you.' The church among us has no 
organized life. — Strong. 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

Aside from presenting the church to the world 
in a false and unfavorable light, bazaars, fairs, 
festivals, etc., etc., do an injury that is beyond 
calculation to the inner life of the church itself. 
In almost all cases, such schemes are efforts to 
dodge personal responsibility in contributing to 
the support of the work ; they are genteel 
attempts to beguile others to pay the bills of 
the organization. If not indulged in too fre- 
quently they may result in monetary success 
but let the public feel that the organization is try- 
ing to impose on its generosity, and its support is 
speedily withdrawn. In all cases such matters 
use up time, strength, talent that ought to be 
given to better, higher and more necessary 
things. Very frequently they result in quarrels, 
dissentions, ruffled tempers, destroying the 
peace, unity and power of the society. No 
amount of money can make up for such condi- 
tions. And such are the conditions confronting 
tis at nearly every point. 

A church located where good work might be 
accomplished, recently, called a new pastor. The 
salary offered was small, but the need of the 
field attracted him. He is an upright, honest 
man, of fair ability and education, and capable 



88 TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

of unlimited work. In consultation with the 
officers, he said that he could live on the salary 
offered were he certain to receive his pay in full 
every month. The answer was that there was 
no doubt about it, that they had always paid and 
paid well. Believing them honest and true he 
entered the field. In less than two weeks he 
found out that the salary of his predecessor was 
paid in a large part by fairs and festivals, and 
that the pastor and wife had been the moving 
spirits in such work ; that a sum equal to one- 
half of the salary had been made by keeping a 
restaurant at the fair grounds during fair week, 
and that the restaurant was open on the Sab- 
bath during the fair, while the church was 
closed. These things greatly disheartened him. 
At the end of the first month no salary was 
paid him, and as he had to live, money was 
borrowed from the bank, one of the officers as 
his endorser, but the poor minister had to pay 
the interest on the borrowed money. At the 
end of two months, the trustees told him that 
he had to bestir himself to help them get 
the money. Such work was new and un- 
familiar to him. He said that he did not 
know what to do or say ; that he had gone there 
to preach the Gospel and not to solicit money, 
and the pastorate terminated as soon as financial 
matters were settled. That church has a good 
field; it ought to be a mighty tower of moral 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 89 

strength, but it is not, simply because it is not in 
line with the purposes of the Gospel, and in the 
control of selfish, ignorant, arrogant men. It is 
a pity that it exists. The community would be 
far better without it, and the members would 
gain very materially did they go to other 
churches and mingle with people of higher 
purposes, better methods and sweeter disposi- 
tions. 

In a suburb of a large city, not long since, the 
regular work of a church was all but suspended 
for several months, while a goodly number of 
the men were practising to give what they 
termed Negro Entertainments (with burnt cork) 
to pay the pastor's small salary, long over due. 
The show was a great success, but the best 
people in the community regarded the perform- 
ances decidedly out of place. For nearly a 
quarter of a century that church has been beg- 
ging support from its community. It has come 
to regard such tactics as legitimate and necessary 
part of its work. There were no moral reasons 
for its organization in the first place, and during 
all these years of miserable existence, it has 
failed to impress upon its community that there 
is need for it, or that the community is better 
because of it. The church that is unable to 
win respect can not win souls. The same 
persons praying in the church and wearing 
burnt cork in the hall, praising God for his 



90 TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

goodness in the Wednesday evening meeting and 
using the silliest slang on the stage, singing 
"Jesus Lover of My Soul" in the church on the 
Sabbath, and "Come to my arms, sweet Sally' ' 
in the entertainment on Thursday evening, 
is a spectacle so incongruous that men, with 
respect to themselves and regard to the moral 
purposes of the church in the world, turn away 
from with disgust. It is not to be wondered 
at that the evil one finds such conditions furnish- 
ing prolific fields in which to sow the seeds of 
strife, corruption, damnation and death. 

Festivals, ice cream socials, tea parties and 
concerts are not wrong in themselves; they 
should be regular features of church life, and 
yet, it is decidedly and emphatically wrong for a 
church to use them as means of supplying its 
treasury. The willing offering of God's people 
should be sufficient to cover all expenses. Fes- 
tivals, concerts, lectures and the like should be 
devoted to the social and intellectual interests of 
the people. The church ought to provide every 
year a course of lectures on topics other than 
religious, such as Municipal Government, Profit 
Sharing, The Obligations of Capital to Labor 
The Dependence of Labor uponCapital, etc., etc., 
topics of daily interest. These lectures ought 
to be free to all. Pastors should train the people 
to look to them and attend them. Popular con- 
certs should also be given free ; in the winter, 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 91 

oyster suppers, and in the summer, ice cream 
festivals, also free, or at least at cost. The 
church is not a money making enterprise. It 
ought never enter into a business competition 
with the merchants of its community; it is not 
in the world to get but to give. By providing 
clean, healthy, elevating means of recreation and 
entertainment, the masses would be less inclined 
to attend public concerts and theatrical perform- 
ances. Mastering a play of Shakespeare once 
a year would be both pleasurable and profitable 
to the young people, and listening to its rendition 
would be a means of grace to the old. The 
theology of that master poet is preferable to 
much of what is constantly preached. The 
morality of his teaching would lose none of its 
strength by comparison with some 5ermonic 
literature of the day, while he would easily 
retain his crown for excellency of diction. As 
intimated, there is much that is good in man 
besides his soul. The church, which is alive to 
the need of the age, will not try to ignore that 
fact, but it will put forth heroic efforts to check 
evil tendencies by offering men things elevating 
and pure. It is to be regretted, but not to be 
wondered at, that some church members frequent 
theaters, but none of us gain anything by 
deploring their want of religion. Experience 
has taught us that some praying long, loud, 
often and lamenting the indifference and world- 



92 TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

liness of their brethren can not be relied upon 
to do the right thing always. It is safer some- 
times to trust the theater-goer than the prayer- 
meeting-goer. But the goodness of the one can 
not be attributed to the theater any more than 
the badness of the other can be attributed to the 
prayer meeting. The attraction the saloon has 
to the working men is not due at first as much 
to the drink as to its social features. It is the 
only place in many a city and village where the 
poor man may go to spend a few hours in quiet 
social intercourse with friends. Did the church 
provide pleasant rooms, furnished with books, 
papers, magazines, games and two or three lead- 
ing members always at hand to welcome those 
entering, greet them as men, converse with them 
as fellow mortals, it would not be long before 
they would attend the regular services of the 
church, and the money that would otherwise 
swell the till of the saloon given to save others. 
The Saviour made the giving of a cup of cold 
water as prominent a privilege as prayer. The 
one failing to give the cup has ppor chances of 
giving anything else. The church that will not 
touch men with sympathy and benevolence can 
not reach God with prayer and song. The most 
eloquent preaching of the Gospel is the living of 
it ; God answers the prayers of the church that 
puts forth all its energies to answer them itself. 
The church ought to be a social center ; its doors 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 93 

ought to be open wide day and night ; its sweet 
and pure influence ought to follow men in all the 
walks of life and help them to win the battle. 
A young Miss attending the Armour Institute 
in Chicago was appointed one of two to prepare 
a lunch. Her associate was a young woman 
knowing how a table should be set, and how gen- 
tlemen should be waited upon. "The young Miss 
went home and began to think. Her father 
worked hard. He was in the habit of coming 
home tired, drinking a great deal of beer, soon 
falling asleep, and then throwing himself upon 
his bed in the clothes which he wore during the 
day and which he usually kept on through the 
night. One evening the father came home, as 
usual, and found the table nicely set. A clean 
white cloth covered it. The daughter said: 'I 
want you to sit down here. We are going to 
have things a little different. We will begin 
with soup.' 'But I don't want any of your soup.' 
'But this is very nice. All respectable people 
eat soup. You must taste it.' The father tasted 
it, liked it and ate a second dish of it ; perhaps 
a third. Other food followed. After that supper, 
no beer was wanted. That night Mr. O'Flarrity 
slept in his bed like other men. Soon he wanted 
a better tenement, and now is paying $25 a 
month for one of the Armour flats, and his 
daughter, of whom he is justly proud, and who 
has made a new man of him and filled him with 



94 TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

new ambitions, is a teacher in the mission and 
universally respected and honored. All this was 
brought about, as the father assured Dr* 
Gunsaulus, by an Armour Institute lunch."* 

And what a victory that was. Berkeley Tem- 
ple, in Boston, the Tabernacle, in Jersey City, 
and one or two churches in New York are 
doing these practical things of religion, and 
are winning the masses. A minister accepted a 
call to a New England town and was told the 
familiar story, "no young men in the congrega- 
tion," but he went to work with the few that 
were in it and soon won a large company of will* 
ing and effective workers for Christ. Let me use 
the words of another : 

"When the new edifice was built provision 
was made for a reading room and a gymnasium. 
at the request of the young men themselves. 
The gymnasium is a modest affair, provided with 
dumb-bells, Indian clubs, chest weights and a 
striking bag. A running track was also 
arranged. During the last winter a regular 
athletic class was conducted by a member of 
the league. A junior class of boys has also 
been conducted on Saturday afternoons. By the 
latter means the younger boys have been in the 
Sunday morning meetings. Races were held 
and the records of the men in these, with other 
athletic events were kept. With this athletic 

* Dr. E. F. Williams in The Congreg-ationalist, August 13, 1896. 



TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 95 

departure the influence of the league on the 
outside young men began to assert itself. One 
incident, illustrative of this, is worthy of notice. 
A young fellow who had not been identified in 
any way with the organization became a constant 
visitor to the gymnasium, where he spent his 
time diligently in ferocious assaults upon the 
striking bag. On inquiry it was learned that 
just before this an altercation had arisen between 
himself and another fellow which had led to 
blows. The contestants had been separated, but 
had made a mutual arrangement to meet several 
days later in a more secluded place. Suffice it to 
say that the fight never came off and that one of 
the principals is just now a regular prayer meet- 
ing attendant. * * * * * * 

"While we have given emphasis to this athletic 
side of its work, the league is not an athletic 
club. This is only an incidental of its work. 
Frequent socials for young men only are given. 
A debating society is one of its intellectual 
features. Occasionally the Sunday evening 
service is in its charge. * * * * 

<4 It was at first thought that this organization, 
with the Young Women's League and the 
Women's League side by side with it, might 
diminish interest in the work of the Young 
People's Society of Christian Endeavor. But, on 
the other hand, its members are also the life of 



96 TRIFLING VERSUS WINNING. 

the Endeavor work, and that society has been 
stimulated by the new organizations. * 

"This is only one of the means which Mr. 
Leavitt is using to reach the community at large. 
The work of the church, moreover, is not laid 
aside during the summer. Indeed the 'neigh- 
borhood work' is increased during the summer 
months and is carried on by a special committee. 
The athletic feature gives opportunity for the 
continuance of the work of the Young Men's 
League during the vacation period. 

"The success of this organization demonstrates 
that young men can be reached best by young 
men, and that they can best be reached by 
young men's means. Young men as a class are 
open and susceptible to the influence of a virile 
Christianity."* 

A wholesale denunciation of modern and 
aggressive methods in church work savors ot 
bigotry and self-righteousness. Socials and festi- 
vals may be used to the salvation of souls, and 
prayers and songs may be as pearls cast before 
swine. "What God hath cleansed, make not 
thou common. "f 

* The Cong-reg-ationalist, August 20, 1896. 
t Acts 10:15. 



THE LAW OF PROSPERITY. 



Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that 
there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now 
herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you 
the windows of Heaven, and pour you out a blessing 
that there shall not be room enough to receive it. — 
Malachi. 

I have often seen His special providence in answer to 
prayer. Starting with a small capital, He has enabled 
me to give some thousands of dollars for the cause of 
Christ, and now in old age I have a competency of this 
world's goods. — D. Hanchett, Kaneville, Illinois. 



THE LAW OF PROSPERITY. 

I fear that ministers and officers of churches 
fail in the practise as well as in the teaching of 
God's law of giving. We go to our congrega- 
tions, preset t to them some cause worth}' of 
their support, and try to excite feelings of com- 
passion and benevolence within them so they 
may contribute largely. The same thing is 
again repeated when some other cause calls for 
support. While the American people are pre- 
eminently generous and liberal, they do not give 
after all but a small fraction of what they are 
able to give. This is in part due to the fact that 
we look at the matter as "giving'' and not as 
"paying" to God our honest debt. Nothing is 
plainer to me than that God requires at least one 
tenth of our income. When the paying of that 
one tenth is made a most solemn religious act, 
the heart leaping with joy because of the privi- 
lege it affords, God has promised to accom- 
pany it with his blessing upon our material as 
well as upon our spiritual interests. It is 
often said that "the majority of men are more 
anxious to secure a cottage here below than a 
mansion up above," but the pulpit that is true to 
itself, true to God, true to the people, will teach 
men how to secure both, and to secure them in 



100 THE LA W OF PROSPERITY. 

God's way. God has intended that men shall 
possess the good of this life as well as the joy of 
the life to come. Bible principles are to be 
incorporated into commercial interests ; men are 
to win the world without violating principles of 
strictest honesty. The} 7 are to be so fortified 
with godly fear that taking a momentary advan- 
tage by sharp tricks of trade is no temptation to 
them, and they are to be just as ready to turn 
over to the treasury of the L,ord the portion 
belonging to Him as they are to receive their 
own. In this life the material is as necessary as 
the spiritual. Christ did not abolish the teach- 
ings of the prophets; he accepted them all, but 
he did develop them to meet the needs of all 
nations, and tithing became not a duty but a 
privilege. Some degree of material prosperity 
is necessary to spiritual prosperity. A wealthy 
church is vastly better situated to possess and to 
exert a spiritual power than a poor church. A 
wealthy person is more favorably privileged to 
enjoy his religion than a poor person. Are they 
so, is another question. That they ought to be 
so is as clear in the Bible as the sun is in the 
sky. A man harrassed by the world is embar- 
rassed in his religion. Circumstances wield 
powerful influences in the development of char- 
acter. The God that has made the world and 
the man, the God that holds the key to all the 
resources of comfort and of joy, has pledged 



THE LA W OF PROSPERITY. 101 

himself to protect and to prosper, both mate- 
rially and spiritually, the man who lives accord- 
ing to his commandment. 

The trouble is, we do not believe his promise. 
We feign to believe that all his promises are 
good for the world to come, but for this, we look 
to our own energies. It seems clear to me that 
if we have sufficient confidence in him to believe 
any promise, we ought to have sufficient con- 
fidence to believe every promise. Shall I put it 
in another way? If we can not believe God in 
everything, we can not believe him in anything. 
And the want of a living, active faith in God 
must account for much of our poverty in both 
material and spiritual things. The words of God, 
in the mouth of Malachi,* have stood in the Bible 
as a crystal spring bubbling forth fresh water in a 
desert, offering comfort and consolation to the 
millions passing by it, but a few only have been 
refreshed and strengthened. Those who have 
drank the meaning of those words know that 
should all the people turn into the treasury of 
the Iyord one tenth of their income, that the 
land would witness greater prosperity than ever 
before. I have believed for years that ten dollars 
out of every one hundred, one dollar out of 
every ten, ten cents out of every one dollar of 
my income belong to the Lord, but I must 
confess that I did not see until recently that 

* Mai. 3:10. 



102 THE LAW OF PROSPERITY. 

God has made the honest and cheerful giving of 
that tenth part a condition upon which he 
guarantees to me a degree of material as well as 
spiritual prosperity, and that withholding from 
Him the tenth is an element in the poverty of 
men, sometimes the sole cause of it; and yet 
there is no doctrine in all the Bible more clearly 
and definitely set forth, but men do not care to 
look with unbiased minds and seek to see it in 
the light of God's illuminating spirit. To rid the 
world of its poverty, the cause of it must be 
removed. We must sow the seed from which 
prosperity springs ; we must learn that the way to 
get is to give. Never was there such talk of 
poverty and the want of money as now, and 
never were men farther from a solution of the 
difficulty. It matters but little what party is in 
power as long as the masses continually rob God 
of the portion belonging to him. Poverty will 
remain in our midst. History repeats itself. 
God repeats himself. Similar circumstances 
produce similar results. Literature, sacred and 
secular, groan under the weight of proof that the 
Jewish nation prospered when complying with 
the divine law, and whenever it went astray it 
became poverty stricken and fell at the advent 
of the enemy. 

In returning from battle loaded down with 
spoils, Abraham met Melchezedek, the universal 
priest, and gladly presented him with the tithe.* 

* Gen. 14:20. 



THE LA W OF PROSPERITY. 103 

The history of Jacob shows that the beginning 
of better things in the man's character was 
simultaneous with making a pledge to the Lord 
of one tenth.* One tenth from the avaricious 
Jacob was equal to one half from the reckless 
Esau. The prosperity of the man began with 
that pledge. The constitutional law of the 
Jews read : "And all the tithe of the land, 
whether of seed, or of fruit trees, or of the herd, 
or of the flock, even of whatever passeth under 
the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord."f 
And the moral philosophy of that law may be 
understood from the following : "That the Lord 
thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine 
hand which thou doest."! That was a promise 
of blessing in material things — the work of thine 
hand. Man can and ought to give the one tenth, 
but he cannot regulate the early and late rain, 
and the sunshine, nor prevent the million 
insects of the dust from nibbling at the roots. 
These are in the hands of God, and God pledges 
his honor that prosperity will follow the com- 
pliance with the law. Turn to Malachi 3:7, 8, 9, 
read that terrible denunciation, and then think 
of the condition and position of the American 
people today. Is it not a true description of this 
people? "Return unto me and I will return 
unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts ; but ye said, 
wherein shall we return?'' O yes, that is the old 

* Gen. 28:20, 30. t Lev. 27:30, 32. X Duet. 14:22, 28, 29. 



104 THE LA W OF PROSPERITY. 

familiar cry. "What have I done? Have I not 
prayed daily, gone to the church constantly, paid 
my dues regularly?" How much of it? Well, 
can a man rob God? Listen, God says, "Ye have 
robbed me." In what? "In tithes and offerings. 
Ye are cursed with a curse, for ye have robbed 
me, even the whole nation." This comes pretty 
near being a perfect description of the condition 
of things among us today. Judas sold his 
Saviour for only thirty pieces of silver. On 
Calvary, righteousness went up, but the Jews 
went down. The nails did not fasten perma- 
nently the body of Jesus to the cross, but they 
did fasten the character of the chief priests, 
elders and scribes; the spear stuck in his side 
did not extinguish his power, but it did that 
of the Jewish nation ; the grave did not hold 
his body, but it did hold the body politic of 
the Jews, and there it lays. If the Jews will 
ever stand again among other nations, they will 
not stand as Jews, but as Christians. O that 
the American people w r ould read the signs of 
the times and return to God before it is too late. 
There is plenty of money and plenty material 
out of w T hich to make more. Money is given too 
where men think it will yield large returns. 
This again shows lack of faith to believe God's 
work a good investment. Materialistic philos- 
ophy can not see that God can make the ninety 
cents go farther when the ten cents is given 



THE LA W OF PR0SPERI1 Y. 105 

him, than the whole dollar possibly could go, 
but the truth of the principle does not rest on 
philosophical suppositions, but on the character 
of God. There are hundreds of men in the 
world today from long experience able to stand 
up in vindication of that law. Many methods 
of giving to the Lord's work are advocated in 
our day. I like the weekly plan, but to make 
any plan a success, we must have our blind 
eyes opened so we may see that "giving" is one 
of the sweetest and richest acts of the Christian 
life, and that nothing that we may do or say is 
acceptable to the Lord if that grace is wanting. 
It is the basic principle upon which the Christian 
character is built. Free heartedness and benev- 
olence come in when our contributions exceed 
the one tenth. Up to the tenth we simply 
pay our honest debt. The thought that we do 
not do it is simply horrible. Let us pray for 
grace to give. 



THE RELIGION OF 

MATHEMATICS. 



"God give us men ! A time like this demands 

Clear minds, pure hearts, true faith and ready hands — 

Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men whom desire for office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office can not buy ; 

Men who have honor — men who will not lie ; 

Tall men — sun-crowned men — who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking ; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; 

For, while base tricksters with their worn-out creeds, 

Their large professions and their little deeds, 

Wrangle in selfish strife, lo ! Freedom weeps — 

Wrong rules the land, and waiting, Justice sleeps." 

— HOLMES. 



THE RELIGION OF MATHEMATICS. 

Suppose that, for some reason sufficient to us, 
we reject 400,000 from the list given by The 
Independent, there would remain an army of over 
23,000,000 doing religious work among the 
remaining 37,000,000 of our population. In 
exact numbers, the population of the United 
States at the last census was 62,622,250. It is 
seen at a glance that the religious element is 
comparatively strong. For reasons sufficient to 
itself, the Assembly Herald rejects a greater 
number and says: "There are but 21,000,000 
Christians, Protestant and Catholic, in our country; 
49,000,000 (more than two-thirds of our fellow 
citizens) do not profess to be on the Lord's 
side." To which The Indepe?ident of September 
3, 1896 replies as follows: "This is technically 
correct, or was so in 1890. But is it fair as a 
basis for home mission appeal?" And it goes 
on to show that the 49,000,000 who do not 
"profess to be on the Lord's side" "include all 
infants and children of immature years ; all 
young people not on church rolls, although they 
may be associated members of Young People's 
Societies, Young Men's Christian Association and 
other similar organizations; all adults who 
occupy church pews and contribute largely to 



110 THE RELIGION 

the support of church work, though not com- 
municants ; millions who are too young to exert 
any influence at all, and millions more whose 
general influence is on the side of Christianity, 
and who rejoice in its success." Verily, taking 
everything into account we would not go far 
astray by claiming fully two-thirds of our popu- 
lation on the side of Christianity. An accurate 
estimate of the actual work done by the church 
in winning converts, and in its contributions in 
various ways and by divers means to the spread 
of the Gospel, is not yet furnished us, and is one 
of the needs of the age. We trust that some 
mathematical genius will undertake the task. 
Very little investigation, but not sufficient to 
warrant a statement, has convinced me that the 
church handles more money ever}^ year, in 
direct and indirect channels, to the religious 
culture of the people, than the cost of running 
all of our railroads, the expense of our govern- 
ment, the public schools and our telegraphs 
combined. Every now and then we are told how 
little the church is doing and what gigantic 
progress is everywhere seen on the outside of it, 
while it is to the church that much of that 
progress is to be attributed. Then again, 
alarmists try to frighten us by magnifying 
the enormity of our sin. Did we believe half 
of what is told us, we would be compelled 
to believe that the Gospel is a failure, that 



* OF MA THEMATICS. Ill 

humanity is fast sinking in its own pollution, 
that "all men are liars'" and that the children, 
are greater liars than the parents, and so con- 
tinue to grow from generation to generation, 
that there is neither virtue nor honesty among 
the children of men. Such jargon is often 
heard in our pulpits, and is used in variously 
modulated degrees by all demagogues. In a 
city where I once ministered was a clergyman 
who dwelt on the dark and unfavorable side 
of humanity in nearly all his preaching. At 
times he was so sensational that his language 
was indecent, and yet he claimed to deny the 
doctrine of " total depravity," while that was the 
only logical ground on which he could stand. 

Powers of evil are zealously magnified. A 
vast number of thinkers and writers seem to 
rejoice at finding some pretext for declaring the 
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ a failure. 
"The church is losing her hold on the masses" 
is continually asserted, while in truth the church 
has never had a "hold on the masses." Of 
course, under the Old Dispensation, the govern- 
ment of Israel was theocratic, and the church 
was the center of political and social life, as well 
as educational and religious, but the times when 
the masses were imbued with the spirit and 
power of true worship, and devoted their 
energies to religious work, are rare exceptions. 
It is doubtful whether the world has ever seen a 



112 THE RELIGION 

time when as large a per cent, of the people 
was religious as is found today, or the church 
doing a better and a more successful work 
among the masses, although it may come far 
short of its possibilities. I have freely admitted 
much negligence and inactivity, coldness and the 
want of sympathy, on the part of the religious 
people, but that is in a comparative sense — 
measuring what the church does with what it 
might do — and not admitting the weakening of 
its power or the declining of its strength. A 
vast amount of religious work, of necessity, is 
done at such times and in such a manner that no 
record of it can be made, while evil deeds are so 
emphatic in their consequences that figures are 
at hand to show their extent. Besides, in 
record-keeping, "the children of this world are 
wiser in their generation than the children of 
light." At my left hand is a little book* of 
great value, written by a clear and a strong 
thinker. The labor bestowed upon it is almost 
unconceivable to the inacquainted with such a 
work. The facts and figures it gives, relative to 
the moral status of our people, startle me. I 
can not get away from them. Do what I may, 
they leap before my eyes, they follow me in my 
walks, they haunt me in my dreams, ever telling 
of a fearful condition of things, and of a more 
fearful consequence unless a radical change is 

* The Prohibition Handbook. Funk & Wag-nails, 50 cents. 



OF MA THE MA TICS. 113 

speedily made. I will insert here a single page 
and will ask the reader to ponder long over the 
figures : 

HOW WE SPEND OUR MONEY.* 

Foreign Missions $ 5,000,000 

Bricks 85,000,000 

Potatoes 110,000,000 

Churches 125,000,000 

Public Education 165,000,000 

Silk Goods 165,000,000 

Furniture 175,000,000 

Sugar and Molasses 225,000,000 

Woolen Goods 250,000,000 

Boots and Shoes 335,000,000 

Flour 345,000,000 

Printing and Publishing 375,000,000 

Cotton Goods 380,000,000 

Sawed Lumber 490,000,000 

Tobacco 515,000,000 

Iron and Steel 560,000,000 

Meat 870,000,000 

Liquors 1,080,000,000 

Accepting the lowest estimate, there are in the 
United States 21,000,000 persons belonging to 
Christian churches. It is a surprising coinci- 
dence that the number of those engaged in 
adding to the nation's material wealth is in the 
neighborhood of 21,000,000. Rev. Mr. Waldrom 
tells us, "A careful analysis of those engaged in 
'gainful occupations' shows that in 1890 there 
were 20,115,106 persons directly productive of 

* Prohibition Handbook, p. 31. 



114 THE RELIGION 

wealth."* It would be hard to demonstrate 
satisfactory to all that the majority of the "pro- 
ducers of wealth" are also religious, and yet on 
the face of it, that seems reasonable to believe. 
Since I have given thought to this thing I have 
located myself in New York and Chicago, 
Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, Philadelphia and 
St. Louis, Washington, D. C, and Denver, and 
in several smaller cities, and I have tried to call 
to mind the leading men engaged in the legiti- 
mate business of those localities. I have also 
interrogated several commercial travelers on this 
point, and I am forced to the conclusion that 
the majority of our producers are religious. 
Taking a hasty estimate of the relative wealth 
of communities tend to prove this very thing. 
And yet the figures tell us that the contributions 
of the United Statee to the religious culture of 
the people at home is $125,000,000, and in foreign 
lands $5,000,000 or $130,000,000, all told, while 
the money spent for tobacco is $515,000,000 and 
for liquor $1,080,000,000. The honesty of Dr. 
Waldrom is beyond question, and what he has to 
say on this subject has great weight. We are 
told that "the cost of liquor and tobacco at 
retail is based upon the internal revenue reports 
for the fiscal year, 1893, an( i other items are 
estimated for the same year.'' In his "Hand- 
book on Currency and Wealth, the retail cost of 

* Handbook on Currency and Wealth, p. 92. 



OF MA THEM A TICS. 1 1 5 

liquor for 1893 * s given as $1,079.483,172 — 16.15 
per capita; for 1894 it was $ I >o 2 4>62i,49i — I5-OI 
per capita; tor 1895 it was a good deal less, the 
cost being $962,192,854 — 13.79 per capita. That 
even is bad enough, but there is much con- 
solation in the fact that the cost of liquor is 
decreasing in the last three years, which is 
proof that less is used. It would be very 
interesting to know the retail cost given in the 
estimate of a single glass of beer or a single 
quart of whiskey or a bottle of wine. A man 
who has every opportunity for knowing, told me 
that if those figures are obtained on the basis of 
five cents per glass of beer as retail cost that the 
estimate is more than one-third larger than it 
ought to be. If such is the case it is a pity that 
the people are held responsible for spending more 
money on drink than they do. That much of the 
crime and vice committed in our midst is due to 
drink is evident, but criminals have always tried 
to incite Courts to pity on the plea that they were 
under the influence of drink when the crime was 
committed. The statement of the criminal at 
Court is no criterion by which to estimate the 
relation of drink to crime. Criminals sometimes 
purposely nerve themselves to their wickedness 
by the use of drink. In that case drink is a 
means to an end and not a cause. 

The majority of fallen women is attributed to 
drink. But what of the men? There are more 



116 THE RELIGION 

fallen men than fallen women. Is there not a 
something back of the drink to which this loathe- 
some habit among men and women may be 
attributed? And is not drink often used as a 
means of gratifying a desire requiring all the 
moral powers to control? The charge that the 
church is in league with the saloon, and conse- 
quently responsible indirectly for nearly all the 
filth, corruption and crime in our midst, is with- 
out foundation. The most earnest, consecrated 
and able temperance workers in the land are 
church members. While here and there some 
members drink in more or less degree, the church 
of which they are members deplore the fact. The 
church is almost unanimous in opposition to 
strong drink, but because the same unanimity 
does not exist with reference to methods by which 
it shall be abolished, it is as great a crime to 
charge the church with being in league with the 
saloon as it is to drink. Both is a sin. There is 
a faction in our midst assuming to be "the tem- 
perance people," and unless they are unqualifiedly 
supported in methods and purposes, they further 
assume the right to denounce all others as enemies 
to temperance and as in league with evil. To 
them their position is infallible; they will not yield 
an inch; all have to submit to their judgment and 
follow their dictates or suffer their denunciations. 
The difference between them and the majority of 
their fellow Christians on the temperance question 



OF MA THEM A TICS. 117 

is simply a difference in methods, and not in pur- 
pose. Strong drit k is here, building its castles 
of evil on the very choicest and the most 
desirable locations in our cities, sending forth 
damnation and death to the people, and if there 
is another scene more deplorable, it is that of 
quibbling about means and methods instead of 
uniting on all methods and using every means of 
anihilating the damnable thing. 

"It matters not what our political or financial 
views may be, there is no escaping the fact that 
Mr. Levering was right in saying that the liquor 
bill of this country is a serious factor in its 
economic affairs. It is true that tariff revenues 
and silver products look small along side of the 
$1,200,000,000 spent for liquors. Edward 
Atkinson remarks that it looks rather absurd 
that we should be disputing about a tax of $5 
per head, the cost per person of running the 
entile government of the United States, when 
the annual expenditure of the country for liquors 
and tobacco alone is $15 per head. The whole 
burden of taxation from top to bottom, federal, 
state, county and town is not equal to this liquor 
and tobacco bill. 

"And what is worse, economically viewed, this 
bill is greatest just where the struggle for life is 
fiercest, that is, in the large cities. The number 
of barrels of beer consumed in St. Louis in 1895 
was nine times as large as in all the rest of Mis- 



118 THE RELIGIOX 

souri put together and as large as in all the other 
Southern states combined. In the same year 
Chicago drank about four times as much beer as 
all the rest of Illinois, that is, 2,648,335 barrels 
out of 3,294,495. Boston, high toned, cultivated, 
Athens-like, indulged in five times as much of 
the malt beverage as all the rest of that part of 
Massachusetts which lies outside of its sacred 
precincts ; and New York City swam in a river 
of beer equal to nearly one-seventh of all the 
beer consumed in the entire country, or, 4,691,446 
barrels out of 33,469,661."* 

But what can the church do in the matter 
more than it is doing. Conventions, synods, 
assemblies, associations and leagues all over the 
land have passed resolutions against the traffic in 
all forms. The Church is alive to its duty in the 
matter. Never were more earnest and eloquent 
sermons preached against the drinking habit than 
are heard to-day. The charge that ministers are 
moral cowards and hold their mouths tight on 
this question cannot be sustained. A few isolated 
cases may be found, but American ministers on 
the whole, are fearless and emphatic in their op- 
position to strong drink. When it comes to 
voting, it seems that the only way to win is first 
to increase the number of voting members. As 
things now stand should every member vote as a 
unit the result would still be against us. Accord- 

* Editorial in The Advance Aug-ust 27, 1896. 



OF MA THE MA TICS. 1 19 

ing to an estimate given by Rev. W. H. Roberts, 
D. D., LL.D., February, 1895,* there are in the 
United States 16,940,311 voters, and 6,501,094 
church voters, counting Catholics and Protest- 
ants, 38.4 per cent, of total voters. Should the 
church vote be cast unanimous it could not win. 
It seems very plain that what is most imperative 
of all is the winning of souls to Christ, the 
building up of the churches, the spiritualizing of 
the members so they may become one in purpose 
and in work. The religion the figures show is a 
disappointment to us. But there are some things 
the figures show in an uncertain light and other 
things they do not show at all. The $130,000,000 
do not demonstrate but a part of the contribu- 
tion of the American churches to religious pur- 
poses. Professing Christians, with prayers and 
money, are found behind and beneath all means 
and methods for the betterment of human con- 
ditions. 

* In the Independent. 



THE 
MATHEMATICS OF RELIGION. 



"And ye shall tread down the wicked ; for they shall 
be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I 
shall do this, saith the Lord of Hosts." — Mai^achi. 



THE MATHEMATICS OF RELIGION. 

The Christian people of the United States 
constitute a glorious body. They are leaders in 
the professions, commerce, statesmanship, pa- 
triotism, science, philosophy, arts, in fact in 
all things pertaining to the good of man. They 
are directly associated with the progress, not 
alone of this country, but of the world. Their 
sons, their daughters and their money are found 
in all parts of the globe, doing heroic service 
under the banner of the cross. A partial esti- 
mate of this work may be formed from pages 
62 and 63. The following statistics show the 
number of Americans in foreign fields, and the 
amount of money contributed to the support of 
the work : 





American 


u 


u 


= I 


c 




Mission- 




3 

Ui 


£ rt 


O 




aries. 


h 


X 


•*-• o 


B 


SOCIETIES. 








M 


~ C. 

u.5 


. 

U OB 






c3 


5 
•a 


•c o 


53 o 


So 

cQ 






u 


< 



53, 615 


fc 


H 


American Board 


205 


367 


3, 266 


S 109,603 


S 716,837 


Presbyterian Board, North 


261 


398 


3,772 


30, 452 


65,828 


865,709 


Presbyterian Board, South 


61 


80 


160 






132,133 


ReforrnedChurch in Amer- 














ica (Dutch) 


35 


44 


369 


5,821 




111,288 


United Presbj'terian Board 


27 


48 


1,282 


13, 875 


' 33,503 


105,810 


Cumberland Presb. Church 


11 


19 


50 


88 


1,909 


24,061 


Reformed Presb. Church 














(Covenanter) 


7 


10 


6 


499 




17,168 


Reformed Church of the 














U. S. (German)" . . . 


5 


6 


273 


218 


2,528 


31,991 


Ref. Presb. Gen. Synod . 


18 


14 


274 


294 


120 


6,000 


GermanEvangelicalSynod 














of North America . . 


7 


3 


35 


575 


1,200 


10,000 


Associate Reformed Synod 














of the South ... 


3 


6 


54 


91 


225 


9,532 


American Baptist Mission- 














ary Union" 


184 


283 


5.917 


25, 021 


289,532 


568.465 


BaptistSouth'nConvention 


41 


15 


'581 


707 




130,867 


Free Baptists ....... 


12 


23 


59 


3,200 


1,917 


30,526 


Seventh Day Baptists . . 


2 


3 


2 


122 


1,000 


4,000 


German Baptist Brethren 














Tunkers) 


7 




14 




5,204 


6,456 


Methodist Epis. Church- 


240 


369 


15,000 


40,423 


8,216 


1,009,018 


Bishop Taylors African 














Missions 


22 


28 


225 


200 




30,000 


Meth. Epis. Church. South 


57 


52 


1,277 


1,116 


'2,689 


227,013 


Meth. Protestant Church . 


6 


8 


61 


745 


296 


15,806 


Wesleyan Methodist . . . 


6 


7 




17 


3,713 


2,368 


Protestant Epis. Foreign 














Missionary Society . . 


50 


52 


84 


5,101 


12,212 


301,612 


Evangelical Association . 


90 


80 


1,475 


25 


31,200 


17,500 


United Brethren in Christ 


3 


3 


118 


490 


300 


60,000 


Evangelical LutheranGen- 














eral Synod 


10 


12 


1,437 


5,419 


11,897 


49,827 


EvangelicalLutheraniGen- 














eral Council 


8 


11 


239 


1,893 




* 16,428 


United Synod of Evang. 














LutheranCh. in theSouth 


2 




11 


21 


21 


* 3,183 


Foreign Christian Mission- 














ary Society (Disciples) 


30 


27 


472 


980 


669 


73,258 


Christian Church (Conven- 














tion) 


4 


2 








5,878 


United Brethren (Mora- 














vians)* 












9,560 
112,000 


Seventh Day Adventists* . 


*23 


' 19 




190 


'5,'oob 


American Bible Society . 


16 

1 

15 










184,538 
11.766 


American Tract Society 










The Friend's Church . . . 


' 30 


77 


758 




32,531 


Woman's Union Mission- 














ary Society 




24 


10 


1,860 


1,611 


73,680 








Totals 


1,469 


2, 043 


36, 600 


193816 


5590,393 


5,006,809 



* From American Board Almanac of Foreign Missions. 



THE MA THEM A TICS OF RELIGION 125 

The testimony of the Viceroy of China to the 
value and worth of Mission work in his country, 
as uttered by him in New York recently, to the 
representatives of different foreign missionary 
societies, assembling on purpose to greet him, is 
worthy of serious consideration. The New York 
Sun declares this address the most important 
delivered by the great statesman since his 
arrival in our midst. Here it is : 

"Gentlemen : — It affords me great pleasure 
to acknowledge the grateful welcome to this 
country offered to me by you as the representa- 
tives of various boards and societies who have 
engaged in China in exchanging our ideas of the 
greatest of all truths which concern the immortal 
destinies of men. 

"In the name of my august master, the Em- 
peror of China, I beg to tender to you his best 
thanks for your approval and appreciation for the 
protection afforded to the American missionaries 
in China. What we have done, and how little 
we have done on our part, is nothing but the 
duties of our Government ; while the mission- 
aries, as you have so ably expressed, have not 
sought for pecuniary gains at the hands of our 
people. They have not been secret emissaries 
of diplomatic schemes. Their labors have no 
political significance, and the last, not the 
least, if I might be permitted to add, they have 



126 THE MATHEMATICS 

not interfered with or usurped the rights of the 
territorial authorities. 

"In a philosophical point of view, as far as I 
have been enabled to appreciate, Christianity 
does not differ much from Confucianism, as the 
Golden Rule is expressed in a positive form in 
one, while it is expressed in the negative form in 
the other. Logically speaking, whether these 
two forms of expressing the same truth cover 
exactly the same ground or not, I leave it to the 
investigations of those who have more philo- 
sophical tastes. It is, at the present, enough to 
conclude that there exists not much difference 
between the wise savings of the two greatest 
teachers on the foundations of which the whole 
structure of the two systems of morality is built. 
As man is composed of soul, intellect and body, 
I highly appreciate that your eminent boards, 
in your arduous and much esteemed work 
in the field of China, have neglected none of the 
three. I need not say much about the first, 
being an unknownable mystery of which our great 
Confucius had only an active knowledge. As 
for intellect, you have started numerous educa- 
tional establishments which have served as the 
best means to enable our countrymen to acquire 
a fair knowledge of the modern arts and sciences 
of the West. As for the material part of our 
constitution, >our societies have started hospitals 
and dispensaries to save not only the soul, but 



OF RELIGION. 127 



also the body of our countrymen. I have also 
to add that in the time of famine in some of the 
provinces, you have done your best to the great- 
est number of the sufferers to keep their bodies 
and souls together. 

"Before I bring my reply to a conclusion, I 
have only two things to mention : 

"The first, the opium smoking, being a great 
curse to the Chinese population, your societies 
have tried your best, not only as anti-opium 
societies, but to afford the best means to stop the 
craving for the opium ; and also you receive 
none as your converts who are opium smokers. 

"I have to tender, in my own name, my best 
thanks for your most effective prayers to God to 
spare my life when it was imperiled by the 
assassin's bullet, and for your most kind wishes 
which you have just uow so ably expressed in 
the interest of my sovereign, my country and 
people." 

But my purpose is less to show what is done 
abroad than what is accomplished at home. No 
other country is like this. To our shores come 
the down-cast and the down-trodden of the 
world, in search of better environments, but 
they come with their traditions and their habits 
and their filth ; they are hardly worthy standing 
room in our midst, yet, by the very provision of 
the Constitution in a few short years they are 
able to stand on political equality with the 



128 THE MATHEMATICS 

rest. And their influence is cast as often against 
their own interests as for them. Out of these 
people we must make honorable and respectable 
fellow citizens. The task is enormous, and yet 
our success is phenomenal, though not as great 
as we would have it. The $130,000,000 credited 
to the American Church is far below the actual 
amount given to all purposes. Very effective 
work is done by societies outside the church 
supported by the money of Christian people. 

One of these is the Sabbath School Union 
with headquarters at Philadelphia. I clip the 
following from its last year's report : 

"You will be amazed and incredulous when 
I state the fact that more than half of the 
Sunday-schools organized in this country have 
been created by the agency of this successful 
Sunday School Union. Take that fact in if you 
can. More than half the Sunday-schools in this 
country have been created through the agents of 
this organization in different parts of the country. 
If I am not mistaken, more than 86,000 Sabbath- 
schools in this country have been established by 
this institution, and they are organizing new 
schools everywhere ; not only in our own middle 
and eastern states, but in the great western states. 
I have been looking over the reports from the 
different states, where a large number of Sabbath- 
schools have been organized through the agencies 
of the missionaries and district superintendents 



OF RELIGION. 129 



of this Union during the past year. These 
schools, in many instances, grow into churches, 
which increase in usefulness and become instru- 
ments in the hands of God of bringing many 
souls to Christ." 

The benevolent work of that faithful society 
for 1895 represents the magnificent sum of S139,- 
180.50, but that does not include the work of the 
publication department. 

Another important factor in the intellectual, 
moral and religious progress of the people is the 
American Bible Society, with headquarters at 
New York. Its mammoth Eightieth x\nnual 
Report is loaded down with figures and facts, 
showing a most successful and essential work 
done. "The issues of the Society during eighty 
years amount to sixty-one million seven hundred 
and five thousand eight hundred and forty one 
copies. (61,705,841.)" 

Total issues for the year at home are 966,845, 
in foreign lands, 783,438, total number of Bibles 
or portions of it published during the year is 
1,750,283. The amount of money expended in 
what may be called missionary and benevolent 
w T ork is $294,964.39, while the total cash handled 
during the year by the Society is $614,621.55, 
not including a balance on hand of $11,409,91.* 
I give below the report of Dr. Vigus, of Indiana, 
to show the personal labors of one of its many 
superintendents. 



1 30 THE MA THEM A TICS 

Auxiliary societies visited 98 

Anniversaries attended 52 

Ecclesiastical bodies visited 9 

Sermons and addresses delivered . 237 

Official letters sent i>297 

" documents distributed 3,88 r 

Miles traveled on official duty ....-'-... 9,517 

Also that of auxiliary work : 

Collecting and distributing agents employed . . 4 

Voluntary and local agents in the field 52 

Auxiliaries in the field 114 

Branch societies in the field 2 

Protestant churches co-operating 622 

Families visited 10,187 

" found without the Scriptures 873 

Destitute families supplied 674 

" individuals supplied in addition . . . 147 

Children supplied with Bibles 312 

And the American Tract Society comes in for 
a good share of the work done, and the way it is 
done may be learned from an excerpt of Dr. 
Wherry's address at the Society's last annual 
meeting : 

"Take a great city like that in which I live, 
the city of Chicago; take its population and 
seperate it and locate it on some of the prairies 
round about, and then we find that we have a 
Germany of over three hundred thousand inhab- 
itants ; a city that may be called Bohemia with 
sixty-five thousand inhabitants; a city we may 
call Italia with fifty thousand inhabitants; a 

* See 80th Report. 



OF RELIGION 131 



Polish city of over fifty thousand inhabitants; 
we have even a Chinatown of some three or four 
thousand, and an Arabic-speaking community of 
not less than fifteen hundred. And so I might 
go on through the catalogue. Now what is the 
condition of these cities ? Germany is provided 
with one minister in about six thousand ; Bo- 
hemia has but three or four who can speak to her 
sixty-five thousand : this Italian town has but 
two men to preach evangelical truth in the 
language of the people ; Poland has none — no 
one but our own colporter who might address 
them intelligently in their own language. So we 
find all through these cities destitution is great, 
but none so great as in this Polish community. 
This illustrates what the condition of this class, 
no doubt, in other great cities of our country is 
to-day. What agency, therefore, so important in 
the interests of the evangelization of this class as 
that of a Society that publishes a literature in 
their own language, which in a measure is dis- 
tributed from house to house by the Sunday- 
school teacher or Christian worker of any name 
whatever? He may not speak the language of 
those who receive, yet he may, with a loving 
hand and smiling face, put into the hands of these 
unevangelized people that which will bring to 
them eternal life. The reports of our colporters, 
pastors and others show the vast importance of 
this literature in that direction. One pastor 



132 THE MATHEMATICS 

laboring among Italians tells us that he has, dur- 
ing the past three or four years, received from six 
to eight Catholic families into the membership of 
his church, and he attributes this acquisition from 
the Catholics largely to the literature supplied by 
our Society." 

That noble Society has published since its or- 
ganization 471,344,455 copies and 9,719,708,618 
pages. During last year it published 2,528,553 
copies and 40,504,816 pages. The money ex- 
pended in missionary work by this Society from 
April 1st, 1895, t° April 1st ,1896, is $107,900.81, 
making a grand total for the three of over 
$800,000,000. 

There is also an army of Colleges and Uni- 
versites belonging to the various denominations, 
not including State Universities or non-sectarian 
Institutions, holding in their name property worth 
over $40,000,000, every cent of which came from 
Christian people. The property of the non-sec- 
tarian schools is worth as much. There are 
also various enterprises, such as the work carried 
on by Mr. Moody, the W. C. T. U., Seamen's 
Aid Societies, Hospitals and various other insti- 
tutions for the relief of the poor and the religious 
culture of the masses in great cities, reports and 
statistics of which are hard to get, but the bulk 
of the money used by them is contributed by the 
Christian people of the land. The Young Men's 
Christian Association owns property valued at 



OF RELIGION. 133 



$15,211,037, and pays yearly $2,138,097 in 
salaries. It is a crime against the Almighty and 
an insult to the generous liberality of the 
American people, to say that the saloon is the 
most potent factor in their midst. Regardless of 
the seeming testimony of the figures, the drink- 
ing habit is losing strength. The organ of the 
Liquor Dealer, the Wine and Spirit Gazette, 
admits that "there is everywhere a growing 
prejudice against the liquor traffic." From the 
depth of my soul I say Amen to every attempt 
made to destroy this giant evil. I honestly 
believe that the prayers and votes of God's 
people should always be turned against it. The 
only omnipotent power in the world is the power 
that comes from God through men upon society. 
The time is coming when the Church will see as 
one man and will move against this evil in the 
power of its might. To hasten that day, we 
should keep sweet and seek to win and to con- 
vert rather than to denounce and belittle. 

"There are nearly 150,000 places of worship 
in our country. For the most part these are 
open every Sabbath, and throughout the week, 
for various and varying services. With an 
average membership of one hundred at each of 
these, fifteen millions of people will be found 
who have openly professed faith in Jesus Christ 
as their Saviour, and who have pledged them- 
selues to his service. Many more than these are 



134 THE MATHEMATICS 

more or less under the influence of the church. 
Perhaps an average of over three hundred are 
found to attend, with more or less regularity, at 
each house of worship. For these three hundred 
people the church is the center of religious, 
moral and intellectual life, in varying degrees- 
These people are the ones who control the com- 
munity in which they live. The church, in a 
large measure, directs the life of the community, 
or modifies it as no other institution can or does. 

' 'There is no other institution that in the 
course of the year has so many attendants, or 
that has so large an attendance, as the church. 
The theaters of the country will not have nearly 
so many at all their plays as the churches will 
have at all their services. The open air resorts 
will not muster as many patrons as the church 
will count. We may sometimes grow somewhat 
discouraged because all the services are not 
maintained, buoyantly and earnestly, but in the 
course of a year the services of the church are 
attended and maintained as is nothing else."* 

That is an encouraging statement, expressed 
in clear diction and easy style, and made by an 
editor noted for his conservatism and painstaking 
accuracy. The able editorial ends with the fol- 
lowing beautiful, tender and suggestive words: 

"The church is the most august and forcetul 
body on earth to-day. When it realizes its great 

* Herald and Presbyter., August 12, 1896. 



OF RELIGION. 135 



opportunity it will take the land and the world 
for Christ. Just to the extent that the ministry, 
standing in these pulpits, realizes the magnifi- 
cence of its message and the peerlessness of its 
position, does it rejoice and glory in the work to 
which it has been called in the providence of 
God." 

May those words sink deep into the conscience 
of all professing Christians that they may meas- 
ure up to the standard of their possibilities in the 
name of God, and "take the land for Christ." 
For this, let us labor and pray. 



OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 



Stand fast, stand fast, dear native land ! 

Stand on the true foundation ! 
The role that's thine, shall grow more grand, 

As grander grows the nation. 
Hold for the Lord this empire vast, 

Shut in by either ocean ! 
Stand fast, dear native land, stand fast, 

Amid the earth's commotion. 
The last great battle of the world, 

The world will here be fighting ; 
Let Jesus' banner be unfurled, 

Man's wrong and errors righting. 
This is the pivot, where will turn 

The fate of man and nation; 
Stand fast, dear native land, nor spurn 

Thy day of visitation. 

— Rankin. 



OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 

The much talk of church union in our day 
is not to be taken too seriously. Nothing has 
been said or done so far that my be construed as 
a willingness on the part of any church organi- 
zation to give up its own name and identity and 
unite with some other denomination, henceforth 
to face the world under the new name and with 
new methods, to win it to Christ. All the 
learned arguments pro and con, so far, are 
nothing more nor less than the coming together 
of the forces to feel each other's power ; if one is 
convinced that it would come out of the skirmish 
a little better than the other, then it calls for the 
so called "church union." I may be wrong, but 
that is the way it seems to me. On the other 
hand, while the followers of Mr. Wesley are 
divided into seventeen different denominations 
in this country alone, and cannot come together 
under one banner, the chances for them to unite 
with any other body are scarcely possible. As 
long as there are twenty organizations in our 
midst, each claiming to represent Mr. Luther a 
little better than the other, and can not or will 
not unite, we have no reason for expecting them 
to compromise with the Presbyterians. But the 
Presbyterians themselves have twelve distinct 



140 OUR DUTY 10-DAY. 

denominations in the United States, each praying 
and working for itself. As long as the Congre- 
gational families, the Congregationalists, the 
Baptists, the Free Will Baptists, the Christians 
and others governing themselves according to 
the congregational principle, are so far apart it is 
out of all reason to expect that they can agree 
with the Episcopalians on any conditions. The 
Young Peoples' Society of Christian Endeavor 
for a time seemed to offer a solution to the prob- 
lem of Christian union, but Sectarianism got the 
upper hand, rejected one of the best services of 
that matchless society, marched the Young 
People on the narrow road their forefathers had 
travelled, and kept them within the same old 
inclosure. Sectarianism is cowardly. It is 
afraid to let its young people mingle with others 
of different faith lest they might have something 
new and inspiring, which would lead them to 
reject the ultimatum of bigotry and to ' 'stand 
fast in the liberty with which Christ has made 
them free."* Sectarianism is cruel. It insists 
on the acceptance of its dictum without offering 
an argument for it that will stand investigation 
in the light of reason and progress. But leaving 
Sectarianism for the present, let me ask, is 
organic union necessary? Indeed, would it be 
advisable? Many thoughtful men think not. 
The cost of the Presbyterian Assembly is now so 

*Gal. 5:1. 



OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 141 

great that frequent complaints are heard on 
occount of it. Of necessity, the sessions would 
last longer and the cost would increase accord- 
ingly did all Presbyterians unite as one body. 
The same is true of the General Conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal church. And once in a 
while complaints are made because of the cost of 
the Congregational National Council, though the 
cost of the entire denomination, Council, Year- 
book and all, is only five cents a year to each 
member. But meetings of the Boards are also 
large and costly. It is true that some claim the 
expenses would be reduced by union of interests 
but it is doubtful, for the meetings would last 
longer and of necessity would occur oftener. 
Were we to have one Protestant church in 
America, we would be obliged to maintain a 
council of leading men to direct the work, and 
that council would need a head. Then, the 
union of Christianity would have been reduced 
to one point, the union of the Protestant council 
with its President with the Vatican at Rome 
with the Pope. Such a thing is inconceivable. 
But co-operation is practicably possible. There 
is a growing desire among leading Christian 
workers for such understanding and affiliation that 
one will not undo the work of another and con- 
tend with each other for the sake of sectarianism. 
The way such conditions are to be brought 
about is not so much by ignoring denominational 



142 OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 

differences, as by intensifying the American re- 
ligious thought and life. As the United States 
have distinct characteristics political, commercial, 
social, among the nations of the world, so have 
they a religious genius peculiar to themselves. 
Church life ought to mean much more in this 
country than in any other. We are a free and 
independent people. Our common suffrage, 
our public schools, our mountain ranges, our deep 
gorges, our vast plains, our far reaching prairies, 
our great lakes, our railroads touching two 
oceans, with a continent of 3000 miles laying 
between them, constitute a something that makes 
our thought and life very different to those of 
people differently situated. Possibly our food 
may have some share in this. Whatever philosoph- 
ical explanation that may be given for our 
peculiarities, it is plain to all that institutions 
doing excellent services in other countries cannot 
meet the demands of this country. We build 
according to our need. The man who does not 
build a house, or print a book, or cultivate the 
ground according to customs in other coun- 
tries can not be expected to enjoy a church life 
that is foreign to his tastes and habits. There is 
no objections to conducting church services in a 
foreign tongue so long as there are adherents igno- 
rant of the English language in our midst, and 
the trouble with such a church is not so much in 
the language used as in the spirit or the life of 



OUR DUTY TO-DA Y. 143 

the church. If that is foreign to the American 
taste the young people may be depended upon 
to leave it, and they ought. Dr. R. E. Thomp- 
son asks: "Is it wonderful that the Japanese 
find themselves perplexed and amazed by the 
importation of our sectarianism into that most 
promising of mission fields ? Is it strange that 
they are unable to reconcile it with the teachings 
of the New Testament, and that there has 
arisen among them a demand for the unification 
of Japanese Christians upon basis of the truths 
common to all the Christian bodies that have 
been laboring there?" Then he says: "I can 
not for one, withhold my sympathies from them, 
and I look with longing for the day when the 
same spirit shall pervade our American Christen- 
dom, and we too shall rise up to demand that the 
divisions imported from Europe into our Chris- 
tendom shall come to an end in a national church 
of America." "I say the divisions we have im- 
ported from Europe. America often is stigma- 
tized as the land of sects. It is true that we do 
produce a mushroom growth of small sectarian- 
ism, which rarely outlives a decade; and that we 
have produced a great number of variations upon 
the discords of Europe. But the great and un- 
happy divisions of our Christendom, with haidly 
a single exception, are of foreign origin. We 
have more sects than Europe only because im- 
migration has brought us every variety ; of some 



144 OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 

we now possess every existing specimen. " *'Our 
divisions are mainly of alien origin. They are 
European ; and the American grows restive under 
them and shows this at inter vals."* These di- 
visions were imported here, not alone to enlighten 
the masses and to help them to a purer, nobler 
life, but also to keep alive traditions and 
customs peculiar to their native heath ; they are 
detrimental to the genius of Americanism and 
disastrous to the best interest of the Kingdom 
of Christ among us. This thing may be over- 
come by intensifying the American spirit. It 
is not to be wondered at that home missionary 
societies are sometimes loath to grant aid to 
churches conducting their services in a foreign 
tongue. There is no objection to the language 
itself, but behind that language there lurks a 
habit or a custom that is injurious to the growth 
of the organization. And unless the church 
meets a need, and does a work that will count 
upon the rising generation, the Society feels 
honor bound to put its money where it will 
produce immediate results. It is for that very 
purpose that it has been given in its charge. 

Churches of foreign languages are very apt to 
seek a pastor from the home land. He may be 
a good man, an able man, a consecrated Christian, 
but he will do his best work only after years of 
experience in this country. Young men from 

* Divine Order of Human Society p. 209. 



OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 145 

abroad seeking work in American churches ought 
to spend some years in American colleges and 
seminaries. They should also leave their 
prejudice on the other side. The more they 
bring with them the more apt they are to fail in 
their work. This question is not one of supe- 
riority but of expediency and of methods. We 
scarcely do nothing here as is done in Europe. 
Church work is no exception. And churches in 
America without an alien within them greatly 
impair their usefulness by upholding and foster- 
ing foreign traditions and conceptions regarding 
church work and life. In some European coun- 
tries the churches are departments of the state, 
supported and controlled by the government, 
much as our public schools here are, and in some 
cases those state churches are as void of spiritual 
power as our schools would be could rationalism 
close their doors against the Bible and prohibit 
the offering of a public prayer within their walls. 
As Americans, we have decided and distinct no- 
tions regarding the institutions best fitted to 
serve our purposes. Our political life is distinct; 
our social life is distinct; our school life is dis- 
tinct; our business methods are peculiar to our- 
selves, and our church life to do us the most 
good should embrace all distinctive features be- 
longing to us as a people, bringing to bear upon 
them the purity and holiness of the Gospel. By 
this means we would be strengthened and en- 



146 OUR DUTY TO-DAY. 

larged ; our conception of the Gospel would 
become broader, the mission of the church would 
become grander; Jesus Christ in his life and death 
would become sublimer and dearer, and in the 
presence of these inspiring revelations we would 
realize the dignity and glory of personal self- 
denial and sacrifice. Then we would come into a 
living union with Christ. The signs of the times 
point to great things to the world by means of 
the consecrated and sanctified churches of Amer- 
ica. Possibly, denominations will exist to the 
end of time ; perphaps, they are the best means 
of reaching the greatest number of people in the 
quickest time, but rivalry and unholy conten- 
tions, as the shades of night at the advent of the 
morning sun, will pass away before the noble, 
liberal, elevating spirit of Americanism magni- 
fied and sanctified of God to the salvation of the 
people. Let all churches make this the inner 
purpose of their life, and "as doves to their win- 
dows,"* men and women will flock to their 
doors. The nation will be saved and God will 
be glorified. 7 

* Isa. 60:8. 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 



"The church is universal Love, 

And whoso dwells therein 
Shall need no customed sacrifice 

To wash away his sin ; 
And music in its aisles shall swell, 
Of lives upright and true, 
Sweet as dreamed sounds of angel-harps 

Down quivering through the blue. 
They shall not ask a litany, 

The souls that worship there, 
But every look shall be a hymn, 

And every word a prayer ; 
Their service shall be written bright 

In calm and holy eyes, 
And every day from fragrant hearts 

Fit incense shall arise." 



-Loweu,. 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 

The new civilization is gathering her force s 
into the land of the setting sun. The great 
moral battles of humanity are to be fought to a 
finish on American soil. Problems involving 
the destiny of the human race are to be settled 
here. Our population is heterogeneous ; it is 
made up of the best and the worst elements in 
human society. The purest wheat from the 
threshing floors of all Europe and the scum of 
of all the world mingle in perfect civic equality. 
Several times within the last decade have men 
rushed in fury against each other, destroying 
property, defying authorit}' and threatening the 
life of the government. The problems pressing 
for solution must not be ignored by the church. 
The Lord planted her in our midst as the 
guardian of our rights and the inspiration of 
our progress. How to Americanize the masses 
thrown upon our shores in such numbers every 
year is a problem that baffles the wisdom of 
statesmen and philosophers alike, but experience 
reminds us that that is not the province of 
statesmen or philosophers, but of the church. 
She must rise up in her sovereign power to com- 
mand the troubled waves to be still. The first 
essential to this is that the church must divest 



150 OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 

herself of all foreign regalia, and then stand in 
the midst of the masses in the beauty of 
American simplicity and the glory of her God. 
Eloquent preaching and artistic singing alone 
are helpless in this matter. The Roman Catholic 
church has as eloquent preaching and artistic 
singing as any, but the charge is made that that 
church is a foreign institution, and Dr. Thompson 
tells us that the Protestant churches are also 
foreign, but possibly, less intensely so than the 
Catholic. To do their best work in this country 
churches of all denominations must represent 
the highest thought and life of the Western 
world. The stiffness, formality, dogmatism of 
the East, the distinction of one class from the 
other, favored pews to the wealthy and barren 
gallery seats to the poor, are repugnant to that 
spirit which is fundamental in the moral consti- 
tution of this people. That the gain in church 
membership in this country is not greater is due 
fully as much to the want of true Americanism 
in the church as to the want of greater spirit- 
uality. My argument is not that the people of 
the United States are superior to some people of 
Europe, but that they are different and that that 
difference must be recognized in our religious 
life as well as in our civil and social life. Men 
can not be Europeans at the altar and Americans 
at the polls. They can not be expected to 
support American institutions during the week 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 151 

and a religion, or at least a face of it, European 
on the Sabbath. 

Our churches need to be Americanized as well 
as spiritualized; Americanized in the highest 
meaning of that conception, so as to touch, 
arouse, energize and lift up the spirit of the 
masses to a realization of their glorious possibil- 
ities by means of American institutions and 
through the man Christ Jesus. 

A spiritual American church is the church de- 
manded by the logic of western development 
and power ; the pulse beat of such a church will 
be felt among all nations of the world. The In- 
ternational Council of Congregational churches 
held in London a few years ago demonstrated the 
fact that in the conception of divine truth Amer- 
ica is, in the language of to-day, more conserva- 
tive than England. England is more conservative 
than Germany. A state church, free beer and no 
Sunday seem to be congenial to the growth of 
rationalism. But we owe a debt to Germany for 
the grandest and mightiest reformation the world 
has ever seen. Some recent utterances from that 
land of mighty thinkers and great musicians in- 
dicate the decline of materialistic philosophy 
among them, and a desire on the part of many to 
return to the fountain of Luther's inspiration 
and strength. England already has felt the effects 
of these prophetic utterances, and the "progress- 
ive" ardor of many of the younger clergy has fallen 



152 OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 

in temperature several degrees. Dr. Joseph 
Parker, of the Loudon City Temple, the prince 
of preachers, has stood Elijah-like and is stand- 
ing to day for an evangelical Christianity — for a 
Christianity centering in and around the incarna- 
tion and suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Savior of the world. Scotland has remained loyal 
to the faith of the fathers, while "gallant little 
Wales" has stood like steel for the theology of 
the Geneva man. There is not another spot in 
all the world so Calvinistic. That system of doc- 
trine seems to be conducive to the development of 
great preachers; there is no other country on the 
globe that enjoys greater pulpit eloquence. The 
action of the General Assembly ot the Presby- 
terian church in the United States toward those 
erring in doctrine has had a healthy effect on all 
the evangelical churches. Not that they are all 
agreed that the church herself did not err in her 
method of procedure; some seem to think that 
some milder means might have been more judi- 
cious, but the fact that that great church had the 
courage of her convictions to put a stop to the 
disturbing of her peace and the interrupting of 
her work was in itself an innovation. All evangel- 
ical churches benefitted by it. Churches every- 
where are demanding pastors to lead them to the 
green pastures where countless millions found 
Christ precious to their souls, and ever after re- 
joice in so great a salvation; they do not want to 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 153 

risk the salvation of their children or their nigh- 
bor's children to a possible "philosophical con- 
cept" in the world to come. They want them 
saved now, and saved in the same safe glorious 
manner in which their fathers were saved. Quacks 
and nostrums have become nauseating. The 
great Methodist church does not now say very 
much about "free agency;" but she does about 
the need of repentance and the baptism of the 
spirit, and after receiving glorious outpourings, 
she again seeks "a second blessing." Men once 
close to the Baptist heart are now looked upon 
with a degree of suspicion because of arbitrary 
and forced interpretations of portions of the 
Bible. The secret is out; the American people 
demand the men in their pulpits to preach the 
Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not plausi- 
ble theories — to preach a savior to save the man- 
hood of men in this life as well as to save their 
souls in the life to come, a religion to fill men with 
heaven here as well as to fill heaven with men in 
the hereafter. This much is practically settled. 
But new methods in church work must be 
adopted in this country if we are to meet 
the demands made upon us. The institu- 
tional is becoming more and more into favor. 
A church that puts herself in touch with the 
needs of those in her community; a church seek- 
ing to make her existence absolutely indespensi- 
ble to the social classes around her ; a church with 



154 OUR PRIVILEGE TOMORROW. 

a heart as well as a head, hands as well as eyes, 
feet as well as shoulders, all conscrated and 
sanctified to the services of men in the name of 
God. Nearly a quarter of a century ago Pro- 
fessor J. W. Chickering, Jr., of Washington, D. 
C, said: "The church of the future will be a 
Young Men's Christian Association, a religious 
lyceum, a missionary society, a temperance 
league, an infirmary, a hospital, a literary, musi- 
cal, social organization, a gymnasium ; in short, if 
there is any good association on earth, the church 
ought to have all the good features of it, all the 
real uses to humanity, with all the bad left out, 
so far as possible."* Another prophet of God 
nearly a third of a century ago, said: "And so 
let us form a society to ascertain to what extent 
the work of grace has advanced in us. Let us 
see whether the rich can, in any intelligible 
sense, love the poor and not feel them a burden. 
Let us see whether the so-called refined have any 
common bond of humanity. Let us see whether 
people with different sorts of clothes can come to- 
gether and be happy. Let us see whether smart 
and foolish people can associate; whether tem- 
perance men and men of total abstinence can 
respect each other. Let us see whether we can 
love other people's children beside our own. Let 
us see whether we can enjoy paying for other 
people's happiness, as God in Christ has paid for 

* From a sermon preached at First Congregational Church, 
Baltimore, October 2, 1872, 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 155 

our salvation. Let us see whether we can help 
one another to escape the snare that comes 
through poverty. Let us see whether we can 
chasten one another in things that need chasten- 
ing, and encourage with praise what we find is 
good. Let us see whether we can assemble our 
children in fellowship and sports that are without 
taint of envy, rivalry, or sin. In a word let us 
see whether we have passed from death unto life 
by finding out whether ^we do love the breth- 
ren in jany intelligible sense. "* Institutional 
churches were not known in those days, but the 
heart- felt expressions of those seivants of the 
Lord are to-day incorporated in churches aiming 
honestly to help men to solve existing pressing 
problems according to the master principles an- 
nunciated by the Savior himself in his great Ser- 
mon on the Mount. "If the second table of the 
law was as truly a part of the Decalogue as was 
the first, as Christ himself taught, then sociology 
is truly a part of religion as is theology. The 
fact is that these are essential, one to the other, 
and when taken together constitute true Chris- 
tianity."f 

The church that is true to the Gospel meets 
man fairly and honestly in his circumstances and 
trrials, teaches and helps him to make the most 
of time, gives him victory over death, and opens 

* Thomas K. Beecher, D. D. 
tJ. R. Mitchell, D. D., in New York Observer, Aug-tist 27, 1896. 



15G OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 

before him the portals of the eternal city. Infi- 
delity tries to amuse itself by crying, "all is a 
mistake, there is no God, no hereafter, no 
hell, no heaven ; today we live, tomorrow we 
die, and that is the end." A man rushed up 
to Dr. Talmage as he was leaving a boat 
and said: 4 'Doctor, I believe in nothing; when 
I die, that will be the end of me," to which 
the Doctor replied with the blandest of smiles, 
"Thank God for that." There is some con- 
solation to know that infidelity ends in the 
grave. Dr. Cynddylan Jones describes an 
astronomer who examined the heavens by means 
of a magnificent new telescope. At first he saw 
the clear blue sky, then he saw worlds half 
formed, then what seemed to be ruined planets, 
black and ugly, tumbling helter-skelter through 
space, but before publishing the news he 
examined his telescope and made another dis- 
covery ; flies inside of the telescope had im- 
peached the integrity of the heavens."* Should 
infidelity examine its mental disc, it is certain 
that it would talk less about things beyond its 
reach. The Gospel presents to us the eternal 
Son of God, to whom all truth, past and future, 
all phenomena here and in the hereafter, were 
familiar. And he came to us in the form of man, 
submitting himself to human conditions, yet 
living a life of absolute purity; turning to 

* Studies in Matthew, p. 142. 



OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 157 

humanity he asked, "Who convinceth me of 
sin?" And infidelity for once spoke truly, but 
acted meanly, "I find no fault in this man." 
That life so true, so grand, so sublime, and that 
death so cruel, so heartless, yet so calm, are 
unexplainable, except by Revelation. "For it 
became him for whom are all things, and by 
whom are all things, in bringing many sons to 
glory, to make the Captain of their salvation 
perfect through suffering." The Gospel alone 
grasps the moral philosophy of suffering, and 
brings out of it joy to the redeemed. The 
Literati tell us, "the seed of goodness is hid in 
our nature and all is needed is to awaken and to 
develop the seed into fruit." Were that true 
the "something" to awaken and to develop is 
still wanting. But the Infallible Teacher says, 
"the enemy while men slept sowed tares," and 
a learned author says, "tares are degenerated 
wheat." So there are faculties, powers, desires 
within us corrupted, and corruption means the 
breaking down of our nature. To meet that 
condition there is but one remedy, and of all 
systems of thought, the Gospel alone can furnish 
it, and that is "holiness," or as Dr. Cynddylan 
Jones says, "wholesomeness" — the resetting of 
the broken powers. Jesus Christ came to save 
men here as well as for the hereafter. The time 
is approaching when all sin and corruption and 
filthiness shall be banished from the world, and 



158 OUR PRIVILEGE TO-MORROW. 

Jesus shall reign supreme in every heart, and the 
earth shall be like heaven, for the kingdom of 
heaven shall have gained the ascendency over 
every other kingdom, and its king over every 
other king. We may not see that day, but we 
may see the day when he is king over our own 
individual hearts, the divine life flowing in us 
and through us, making our presence and power 
benedictions to the world, aiding us in the 
building up of the glorious kingdom of Christ 
among men, and in the enriching of the worship 
of today and in the enlarging of the work of 
tomorrow. Then the crown : we shall enjoy the 
fruits of the grand and final purposes of the 
Gospel, and with the Redeemed of Christ stand 
pure and white in the presence of the King in 
glory. Amen. 



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